Several French coastal towns banned women from wearing the full-body swimwear, claiming them to be an affront to France’s secular values.
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The office of Nice’s mayor denied that the woman had been forced to remove clothing, telling the AFP news agency that she was showing police the swimsuit she was wearing under her top, over a pair of leggings, when the picture was taken.
File photo taken on August 19, 2016 shows the bylaw forbidding women to wear Burkini at the Ponchettes beach, in Nice, southeastern France. Officials say the ban on the outfit – mostly worn by Muslim women – is a response to growing terror concerns. The protest is against the French authorities clampdown on Muslim women wearing burkinis on the bea.
The ban in Villeneuve-Loubet, which is being challenged in a France’s highest administrative court expected to give a verdict Friday, prohibits any garments that violate secularism, good moral standards, safety and health.
A decision to uphold the bans could have wide implications, by signalling to French mayors that they can ban the hijab in public places in the absence of any national law to that effect.
Security and immigration are now central to the presidential election campaign, and Sarkozy is tapping into the worries of voters on the right with a hard-line platform of law and order.
The court will therefore consider two things: whether the town’s decree banning the burkini is a flagrant violation of civil liberties, and if the harm caused is serious enough to immediately suspend it.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television Thursday that burkinis represent the “enslavement of women” and reiterated support for the bans – but urged police to implement the bans fairly and respectfully.
Luca, also a lawmaker, said that now only a law can now stop troubles since mayors cannot do so.
The bans have divided France’s government and society and drawn anger overseas, especially after images circulated online showing police appearing to force a Muslim woman to take off her tunic.
The State Council heard arguments on Thursday from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group who are seeking to reverse a decision by the southern town of Villeneuve-Loubet to ban the Islamic swimsuit. They say women should be allowed to wear whatever they want.
In Berlin, about 60 people – some wearing burkinis, others bikinis – protested outside the French embassy in front of the Brandenburg Gate. “Women who wear it are testing the Republic”.
But after the recent terrorist attack in Nice, when a Tunisian resident of the city killed 85 and injured hundreds more in a truck attack on Bastille Day, the burkini ban seemed to many critics to have a particularly reactionary bent.
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The burkini was “liable to offend the religious convictions or (religious) non-convictions of other users of the beach”, and “be felt as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by” the community, it added.
