Police in France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population, arrested two protesters wearing niqab veils yesterday after a ban on full-face coverings went into effect.
The women, part of a demonstration in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, were detained for taking part in an unauthorized protest rather than for wearing their veils.
However, in theory at least, French officials can now slap fines on Muslim women who refuse orders to expose their faces when in public.
“Today was not about arresting people because of wearing the veil. It was for not having respected the requirement to -declare a demonstration,” police spokesman Alexis Marsan said.
Two women in niqabs, a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf that did not cover her face and a protest organizer were arrested, Marsan said.
Separately, businessman and activist Rachid Nekkaz told reporters that he and a female friend wearing the niqab were arrested by police in front of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Elysee Palace.
“We wanted to be fined for wearing the niqab, but the police didn’t want to issue a fine,” said Nekkaz, who has promised to auction off a 2 million euro (US$2.9 million) property to start a fund to pay off fines for veil-wearers.
The draconian new law, the first of its kind to be enforced in Europe, was immediately broken by a young woman from the southern city of Avignon, who has become the media symbol of France’s tiny community of niqab wearers.
“This law infringes my European rights, I cannot but defend them — that is to say my freedom to come and go and my religious freedom,” Kenza Drider, 32, told reporters as she boarded a train for Paris to appear on television.
Drider’s husband Allal said: “According to this law, my wife would have to remain cloistered at home. Do you find that normal?”
The law comes into effect at an already fraught moment in relations between the state and France’s Muslim minority, with Sarkozy accused of stigmatizing Islam to win back votes from a resurgent far right.
French officials estimate that only about 2,000 women, from a total Muslim population estimated at between 4 million and 6 million, wear the full-face veils that are traditional in parts of Arabia and South Asia.
However, many Muslims and rights watchdogs accuse the right-wing president of targeting one of France’s most vulnerable groups to signal to anti-immigration voters that he shares their fear that Islam is a threat to French culture.
Police on Saturday said they arrested 59 people, including 19 veiled women, who turned up for a banned protest in Paris over the ban, while two more were detained as they attempted to travel to the rally from Britain and Belgium.
Some critics worry the law may be hard to enforce, since it had to be drawn up without reference to religion to ban any kind of face covering in public and since police officers will not be allowed to remove women’s head coverings.
Anyone refusing to lift his or her veil to submit to an identity check can be taken to a police station. There, officers must try to persuade them to remove the garment and can threaten fines.
A woman who repeatedly insists on appearing veiled in public can be fined 150 euros and ordered to attend re-education classes.
There are much more severe penalties for anyone found guilty of forcing someone else to hide his or her face “through threats, violence, constraint, abuse of authority or power for reason of their gender.”
Clearly aimed at fathers, -husbands or religious leaders who force women to wear face-veils and applicable to offences committed in public or in private, the law imposes a fine of 30,000 euros and a year in jail.
Belgium’s parliament has approved a similar law, but has yet to enforce it. In the Netherlands, far-right leaders have proposed a ban and in Italy, the right-wing Northern League is lobbying for a ban on the French model.
It is hard to gauge the mood of the bulk of veil-wearing French Muslim women, but two who agreed to speak to reporters — who gave their names as Aya and Umm Isra — said they would not challenge the ban in the street.
However, they added, if they can’t wear their niqabs, they will likely go out far less often, suggesting the ban could create a hidden underclass.
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