French mayors defy call to drop burkini ban
The mayors of 28 French towns are maintaining burkini bans in defiance of a court ruling, as the issue becomes a key one to the presidential campaign.
Last Friday’s judgment by the State Council, France’s highest administrative court, that it is illegal to prohibit the full-body swimsuit applies specifically to one resort, Villeneuve-Loubet.
Its conservative mayor has said he will comply with the decision, which set a legal precedent for the other 30 seaside towns that banned the burkini.
A Socialist mayor in northern France and a centrist in the south-east decided to lift bans at the weekend.
Most of the other 28 mayors belong to the centre-Right Republicans or the far-Right Front National. All but one of the bans were imposed by mayoral decrees after the Bastille Day massacre of 86 people in Nice last month.
After the court ruling, the mayors of several Riviera resorts urged muni- cipal police to redouble their efforts to keep beaches free from burkinis, which are worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women in France.
In Nice, video footage showed police in a motorboat ordering a woman who was wearing a headscarf, a long top and leggings to leave a beach on Saturday. In another incident in the town, two women wearing sunhats and hijabs covering their hair and necks were also ordered off a beach.
Meanwhile, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in an interview that a law banning the burkini would stoke tensions between communities and would be both unconstitutional and ineffective. He told La Croix newspaper: “The Government . . . refuses to legislate on this because a law would be unconstitutional, ineffective and likely to create antagonism and irreparable tensions.”
Mayors defying the ruling have been backed by the former conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who has repeatedly condemned the burkini as a symbol of repression.
Sarkozy has called for a national ban, but his rival to become the centreRight presidential candidate Alain Juppe has said he prefers “dialogue” with the Muslim community.
— Telegraph Group Ltd, Reuters