According to a report in the Daily Mail, a criminal inquiry has been ordered into the matter after a racist restaurant owner refused to serve them and asked them to leave the place. However, the man yesterday apologised to a group who had gathered outside.
Advertisement
The incident reportedly took place the night before at the Le Cenacle restaurant in Tremblay-en-France, an area on the suburbs of the capital Paris.
The deputy Mayor of Nice, Rudy Salles, told BBC Radio 4: “If you want to go to the beach in a burkini it’s forbidden because it is a provocation”.
Speaking to French daily La Croix, Cazeneuve reiterated the government’s opposition to legislating on the controversial matter which has sparked fierce debate both at home and overseas about women’s rights and France’s strictly-guarded secularism. The incident was recorded in a video that was later published on social media, where one can here the man telling the women: “Terrorists are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists”. Muslims needed to be “committed to a total defense of the republic in the face of terrorism, in the face of Salafism”.
Eighty-six people were killed in Nice in July and over 400 people injured when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into crowds leaving a fireworks display on Nice’s waterfront on France’s national holiday.
The local prosecutors’ office told the paper that it had opened an investigation into racial discrimination.
He also said he had lost a friend in the Bataclan concert hall shootings by Islamic extremists in November, French media reported.
“I don’t truly believe the things I said”. Some have called for a boycott of the restaurant.
The Committee Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), has since reached out to the two women, vowing to provide “emotional and legal support”.
This week France’s highest court ruled the ban is “seriously and clearly illegal”.
You don’t need to be following the frothing mess that is France’s burkini ban-and the recent suspension of said ban-to know that tensions between France’s sizable Muslim population and the secularist majority is at an all-time high.
Advertisement
Nicolas Sarkozy claims if re-elected as president of France the beach swimwear will never be allowed on beaches in his nation.
