Burkini ban: Women forced off beach and fined for wearing swimsuit Ten women have been forced off the beach in the French town of Cannes after the criticised “burkini” ban – […]

Ten women have been forced off the beach in the French town of Cannes after the criticised “burkini” ban – forbidding head-to-toe swimsuits – came into force.

Four of the women were fined €36 (£32), while all of them were told to leave the beach area after being spotted by authorities.

The ban was imposed earlier in August by Mayor David Lisnard, who said that the garments were a “symbol of Islamic extremism” and “not respectful of good morals and secularism”.

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‘All were very upset’

The women in question were aged between 29 and 57, and were with their children when the incidents occurred, according to reports.

“They are young mothers or grandmothers, and they do not believe they are criminals,” a local council source told the Mail Online. “All were very upset at the way they were treated.”

The swimsuit has also been banned elsewhere in France, in the southern town of Villeneuve and the island of Corsica.

The ban comes in the context of a state of emergency declared after a series of extremist attacks on the country, including the lone lorry attack in Nice that killed 85 people in July.

Incompatible

The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed support for the ban, saying it is incompatible with “the values of the French Republic”, but refused to introduce a nationwide measure.

But the Collective against Islamophobia in France has filed a complaint with the Council of State, Paris’s highest administrative court, saying it was a result of “hysterical political Islamophobia”.

France’s fiercely secular society has grappled with issues of Muslim dress before, with 2004’s ban on overt religious symbols in schools seen widely as a “headscarf ban” aimed at stopped the wearing of the hijab by schoolgirls.