Reuters – A burkini is a swimsuit that only leaves the face, hands and feet exposed.
The row over France’s controversial ban on women wearing burkinis has escalated with the country’s top court to rule on whether the law contravenes human rights.
The Council of State, a body that acts as both legal adviser to the government and as the supreme administrative court, will examine the issue on Thursday after photos emerged of a Muslim woman removing a long-sleeved top while surrounded by armed police on a beach in Nice.
The woman was dressed in leggings, a long-sleeved top and a headscarf, not a burkini. A spokesman for Vantage News, who released the photographs in the UK, said: “The woman was fined, she left the beach and so did the police.”
The incident came after Nice banned the burkini, a form of wetsuit that covers a women’s body and hair. About 15 other seaside towns have done the same. The photographs sparked outrage on Wednesday with #BurkiniBan a top trend in the UK on Twitter.
But France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the rule and said mayors has a right to tell women what they could wear in the name of secularism.
Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, also defended the ban. He said: “Muslims in France are taken hostage by these groups, who would have you believe that the [French] Republic and Islam are incompatible.”
Meanwhile hundreds will protest against the ban both in the UK and in France. A “wear what you want” beach themed protest will take place on Thursday afternoon outside the French embassy in London. The organisers said they were “disgusted to hear of armed French policemen telling women what they are allowed to wear and making them undress in public” and planned the demonstration in response.
Two other protests will be held in Brighton and Le Touquet, near Calais, on September 10. Erin Francis, 26, from Haworth, West Yorkshire, who organised these two demonstrations said she felt obliged to do so after seeing the photographs from Nice on Wednesday.
“I wanted to do something to show women in France we have their back,” she told the Times.
