“No-one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face.” An update on this story. “French anti-burqa law to jail offenders,” from Indian Express, April 30 (thanks to Ed):
France will jail and impose huge fines on anyone who forces a Muslim woman to wear a full-face veil, according to a leaked version of a proposed law revealed on Friday.
While women will face only a 150 euro penalty if they choose to don a burqa or a niqab, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to slap one-year prison terms and USD 20,000 fines on those who make others wear them.
“No-one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face,” says the text of a new law that is to be presented to parliament in July, according to a copy seen by the pro-government newspaper Le Figaro.
The law will create a new offence of “incitement to cover the face for reasons of gender,” the paper said, and this offence will incur a 15,000 euro fine and a year in prison.
Legislators decided to impose a much smaller fine on women caught wearing the veil in public “because these women are often victims,” one of the authors of the law told Le Figaro on condition of anonymity.