This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has branded the full-body burkini swimsuits worn by some Muslim women a “provocation” that supports radicalised Islam.

The burkini ban: what it really means when we criminalise clothes Read more

After efforts by a series of French coastal towns to ban women from wearing burkinis set off a heated debate in the country, Sarkozy said in a TV interview on Wednesday night that “we don’t imprison women behind fabric”.

His outburst earned a sharp rebuke from the woman who created the burkini, the Australian designer Aheda Zanetti.

“I truly, truly believe that the French have misunderstood and that they don’t know what a burkini looks like and what it represents,” said Zanetti.

“For someone to bring out a statement like that on a piece of clothing that is about joy ... he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He needs to go to the beach and maybe ask, what is a burkini swimsuit?

“Burkini is just a word that describes a full cover swimsuit and it doesn’t symbolise anything to do with Muslims. It’s about encouraging our kids and children to learn how to swim.”

Video discussing why some French towns have banned beach-goers from wearing burkinis

On Thursday, the council of state, France’s highest administrative court, will examine a request by the French Human Rights League to scrap the burkini bans. Lawyers argue that the short-term decrees are illegal.

The political row in France has intensified after a woman in a headscarf was photographed on a beach in Nice removing a long-sleeved top while surrounded by armed police.

The series of pictures, taken by a local French news photographer, showed a woman dressed in leggings, a long-sleeved tunic and headscarf being approached by four officers. As the police stand around her, she removes her long-sleeved top, revealing a short-sleeved top underneath. It is unclear whether or not the woman was ordered to do so. In another image, a police officer appears to write out a fine.

The Nice mayor’s office denied that she had been forced to remove clothing, telling Agence France-Presse that the woman was showing police the swimsuit she was wearing under her tunic over a pair of leggings.

Last week, Nice banned the burkini on its beaches, following about 15 seaside areas in south-east France where mayors have done the same.



Nice’s deputy mayor, Christian Estrosi, from the centre-right Les Républicains party, said a municipal police team had “acted perfectly to make sure that [the] decree was respected”. He threatened legal action against anyone disseminating pictures of municipal police. A total of 24 women have been stopped by police in the city since the burkini ban came into force.

The pictures of the woman removing the item of clothing were met with outrage. “I am so ashamed,” tweeted the French feminist Caroline De Haas.

Accounts of other women being stopped by police for wearing Muslim headscarves and long-sleeved clothing on beaches caused fury among the ruling Socialist party and rights groups.

In Cannes, a 34-year-old mother of two described how she had been stopped and fined on a beach, where she was sitting with her children, while wearing clothes and a headscarf.

“I was sitting on a beach with my family. I was wearing a classic headscarf. I had no intention of swimming,” said the former flight attendant from Toulouse, giving her name only as Siam.

She told the police that she thought her clothing was normal and appropriate, she had not shocked anyone and there was no law stopping her being dressed as she was.

“I wasn’t in a burkini, I wasn’t in a burqa, I wasn’t naked, so I considered my clothing was appropriate,” she said. She described a mini-riot around her as about 10 people ran over in support, telling the police that the family was not bothering anyone, while about 10 others verbally insulted her. “There were insults like ‘Go home’, ‘We don’t want that here’, ‘France is a Catholic country’. My daughter was crying, she didn’t understand why her mother was being asked to leave.”

She was fined by police, who wrote on her ticket that her clothing did not conform with “good manners” or French secularism.

Sarkozy, who is running for the presidency again next year, is stepping up his hardline rhetoric ahead of must-win primaries organised by the French right in November where he is expected to face tough competition. He is expected to campaign on a hard-line platform on immigration and security issues in a country marked by recent attacks carried out by Islamist extremists.

In the TF1 channel interview, Sarkozy insisted that Muslims in France are French people “exactly like any other ones” but, when living in the country, they must “assimilate” the French language and way of life, the French regions and the history of France.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith has requested urgent talks with the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, citing the “growing fear of stigmatisation of Muslims in France”.

The bans follow the Bastille Day attack in Nice and the murder of a priest in Normandy. The various mayoral decrees do not explicitly use the word burkini; instead they ban “beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation,” citing reasons such as the need to protect public order, hygiene or French laws on secularism.

The burkini bans have prompted a row over the French principle of laïcité (secularism), amid accusations that politicians are twisting and distorting this principle for political gain, and to target Muslims.