PARIS: Paris police on Monday arrested two veiled women and several other people protesting in front of Notre Dame cathedral against France’s new ban on wearing full-face niqab veils in public.
An AFP journalist at the scene said the arrests came after police moved in to break up the protest which had not been authorised.
“Today was not about arresting people because of wearing the veil. It was for not having respected the requirement to declare a demonstration,” said police spokesman Alexis Marsan.
Two women in niqabs, a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf that does not cover the face and a demonstration organiser were arrested, Marsan said. In another protest, Rachid Nekkaz from the Don’t Touch My Constitution activist group and “a female friend wearing the niqab” were arrested by police in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Elysee Palace, he told AFP.
“We wanted to be fined for wearing the niqab, but the police didn’t want to issue a fine,” Nekkaz told AFP by telephone.
On Saturday police arrested 59 people, including 19 veiled women, who turned up for a banned protest in Paris against the draconian new law, the first of its kind to be enforced in Europe.
Many French police fear the law will be impossible to enforce, since they have not been empowered to use force to remove head coverings, and could face resistance in already tense immigrant districts. “The law will be infinitely difficult to enforce, and will be infinitely rarely enforced,” said Manuel Roux, deputy head of a union representing local police chiefs, in an interview with France Inter radio.
“It’s not for the police to demonstrate zeal,” he said, predicting that when patrol officers meet veiled women they will simply try to explain the law to them and to persuade them to remove their face covering. “If they refuse, that’s when things get really complicated. We have no power to force them,” he said. “I can’t begin to imagine we’re going to pay any attention to a veiled woman in a sensitive area, where men are proud.”
But Interior Minister Claude Gueant insisted the ban would be enforced, in the name of “secularism and equality between men and women ... two principles upon which we can not compromise.”
An AFP journalist at the scene said the arrests came after police moved in to break up the protest which had not been authorised.
“Today was not about arresting people because of wearing the veil. It was for not having respected the requirement to declare a demonstration,” said police spokesman Alexis Marsan.
Two women in niqabs, a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf that does not cover the face and a demonstration organiser were arrested, Marsan said. In another protest, Rachid Nekkaz from the Don’t Touch My Constitution activist group and “a female friend wearing the niqab” were arrested by police in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Elysee Palace, he told AFP.
“We wanted to be fined for wearing the niqab, but the police didn’t want to issue a fine,” Nekkaz told AFP by telephone.
On Saturday police arrested 59 people, including 19 veiled women, who turned up for a banned protest in Paris against the draconian new law, the first of its kind to be enforced in Europe.
Many French police fear the law will be impossible to enforce, since they have not been empowered to use force to remove head coverings, and could face resistance in already tense immigrant districts. “The law will be infinitely difficult to enforce, and will be infinitely rarely enforced,” said Manuel Roux, deputy head of a union representing local police chiefs, in an interview with France Inter radio.
“It’s not for the police to demonstrate zeal,” he said, predicting that when patrol officers meet veiled women they will simply try to explain the law to them and to persuade them to remove their face covering. “If they refuse, that’s when things get really complicated. We have no power to force them,” he said. “I can’t begin to imagine we’re going to pay any attention to a veiled woman in a sensitive area, where men are proud.”
But Interior Minister Claude Gueant insisted the ban would be enforced, in the name of “secularism and equality between men and women ... two principles upon which we can not compromise.”
