TWO WOMEN wearing Islamic face veils were among five people arrested in Paris yesterday for holding an unauthorised protest against a law banning the wearing of the niqab and burqa in public.
The ban, which came into force yesterday, empowers police to impose a fine of €150 on a woman who covers her face in a public place. Anyone forcing a woman to wear a face veil could receive a one-year jail sentence and a €30,000 fine.
President Nicolas Sarkozy says the measure is designed to reaffirm French secular values and women’s rights, but the opposition claims the new law is aimed at winning support for Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party among far-right voters.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith supported the ban, while the Socialist Party abstained in the parliamentary vote, but some sections of France’s Muslim community have campaigned against it.
A Muslim property dealer, Rachid Nekkaz, has urged women to engage in “civil disobedience” by continuing to wear the veil if they wish.
Mr Nekkaz said he would help pay fines and was putting a property worth about two million euro up for sale to fund his campaign.
“I am calling on all free women who so wish to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience,” he said in a webcast.
Police said they had detained five people, two men and three women, at a silent protest that Mr Nekkaz had organised in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris yesterday.
The protesters were held for identity checks because their demonstration had not been authorised, not because they were wearing forbidden clothing, a police spokesman said.
In the southern city of Avignon, a television crew filmed a woman boarding a train wearing a niqab, unchallenged by police.
“It’s not an act of provocation,” said Kenza Drider as she travelled to Paris for yesterday’s protest. “I’m only carrying out my citizen’s rights, I’m not committing a crime ... If they (police) ask me for identity papers I’ll show them, no problem.”
Ms Drider is one of about 2,000 women who cover their face in France, according to an estimate by the interior ministry. Two-thirds are French citizens, and one-quarter are converts to Islam.
In a circular sent to prefects and police chiefs to set out how the measure would be implemented, interior minister Claude Guéant said it would not be applied near mosques and stressed that police would not have the right to remove a woman’s veil.
He said the law included balaclavas and masks but would not prohibit the covering of one’s face with a motorcycle helmet, a bandage, a welding mask, a fencing mask or a fancy dress mask.
Manuel Roux, the secretary general of France’s main police union, said the new law would be “immensely difficult to apply” and predicted it would therefore be little used by his members.
He told France Inter radio it would “become very difficult” if a woman refused to remove her niqab or burqa.
“We don’t have the power to force them. The circular even tells us that we must not use force — we must try to convince them,” Mr Roux added.
Mr Guéant’s guidelines said police were empowered to warn offenders that they may be brought to a police station, but stressed that the use of force to remove a veil was not allowed.