Viral photos add fuel to French burqini debate

More outrage over woman forced to undress on the beach.

This picture taken on August 19, 2016, shows the bylaw forbidding women to wear burqinis on the beach in Nice, southeastern France. Jean Christophe Magnenet / AFP

NICE // The debate on the ban on burqinis from some French beaches escalated on Wednesday as images of a veiled woman surrounded by police on a beach went viral.

The head of the French Councl of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) met interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Wednesday for an urgent discussion bout “the growing fear of stigmatisation of Muslims in France.”

The series of photos published by British media showed a woman dressed in leggings, a tunic and headscarf lying on a beach surrounded by four police officers. At one point the woman is shown removing her tunic — showing she is wearing a sleeveless top underneath — but it is unclear if she was ordered to do so or did so of her own accord. As she does, a policeman appears to write out a fine.

The source of the photographs is also unclear but they caused a furore on Twitter, where many interpreted them as the woman being forced to undress by police.

“Question of the day: How many armed policemen does it take to force a woman to strip in public?” Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter.

A comment by an activist named Sihame Assbague, retweeted more than 7,000 times, said the scene has made France “the laughing stock of the world”.

“I am so ashamed”, wrote French feminist Caroline De Haas.

The CFCM said the images were worrying. “We have seen images of police officers forcing a woman on a Nice beach to remove her tunic when she wasn’t even wearing a burqkini,” said a statement from the council. “With the difficult and critical situation France is facing after the tragic attacks which deeply affected the country, the CFCM calls for wisdom and responsibility from everyone. Today, we need more acts of peace and tolerance.”

A 34-year-old woman in nearby Cannes claimed she was also fined on the spot a few days ago for wearing Ieggings, a tunic and simple headscarf. The woman, who gave her name only as Siam, said “I was sitting on a beach with my family. I was wearing a classic headscarf. I had no intention of swimming.”

Nice and Cannes are among some 15 French towns which have banned the wearing of the burqini, a full-body Islamic swimsuit which covers the head, on beaches, with the local authorities declaring it contravenes French secular values and poses a threat to public order.

But the vague wording of the bans, which refer to beachwear that conspicuously demonstrates a person’s religion, has created confusion.

Beachgoers are not sure whether the bans refer solely to head-to-toe swimwear, which some non-Muslims wear for protection from the sun, or to being fully clothed and having one’s head covered on the seashore. But on Thursday, the State council, which is France’s highest administrative court, will examine a request by the Human Rights League (LDH) to scrap the ban.

Lower courts have supported the decision by French mayors. A tribunal in the Riviera city of Nice — where a crowd was mowed down in July in a grisly lorry attack — said the burking could be seen “as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by” the community.

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* Agence France-Presse