Citizen's de-veiling outlawed as countdown to French burka ban continues
Members of the public will be barred from performing ‘citizen’s de-veilings’ when a burka ban begins in France next month.
Instead they will have to call the police, who will consider whether the offender should be fined, the Interior Ministry said.
However, the police have complained that they will have to waste time on ‘burka-chasing’.
Last year a woman in Paris was fined for ripping off a Muslim’s veil in a busy department store in the country’s first known case of ‘burka rage’.
The attacker said she had been hugely irritated by seeing a fellow customer shopping with her features hidden.
The Interior Ministry made its warning after announcing that the ban on full-face coverings will come into effect on April 11.
It will make France the second country in Europe, after Belgium, to introduce a ban on a garment which immigration minister Eric Besson called a ‘walking coffin’.
While women face fines of £130 and ‘civic duty’ guidance if they break the law, men who force wives or daughters to wear burkas could be jailed for up to a year or fined £25,000.
An Interior Ministry source said: ‘Women cannot be subjected to a citizen’s de-veiling. Anybody caught trying to pull a veil off will face criminal action.
‘The aim of this law is not to cause humiliation, or even persecution. It is to make sure that people do not cover their faces.’
Posters have already gone up in town halls across France reading: ‘The Republic lives with its face uncovered.’
Belgium introduced a full ban last year, while Holland, Spain and Switzerland are also likely to follow suit.
There are no plans to introduce a similar ban in Britain, although politicians from the UK Independence Party and some Tory backbenchers have suggested one. By Peter Allen
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