Nice Officials Say They'll Sue Internet Users Who Share Photos Of French Fashion Police Fining Women In Burkinis

from the liberte! dept

Over the last few weeks there's been plenty of controversy over plans on the Côte d’Azur in the south of France to ban burkinis -- a kind of full body bathing suit favored by some Muslim women. As the Guardian pointed out recently, the whole thing seems like a "bizarre inversion" of Muslim countries where making sure women are covered is enforced:

The burkini row may seem banal, and to some a surreal inversion of laws in Islamic countries, but it has become yet another flame in the murderous tinderbox of Islamism in France, invoking issues of control over the body, religious freedom, racism, provocation, terrorism, Islam and Islamophobia, republicanism and what the French call laïcité. Lïïcité is the hardest for people outside France to understand: our words “laity” and “secularism” fail to express the depth of allergy to all things theocratic, which is endemic to French societal fabric since the revolution.

Others are pointing out the absurdities when compared to what's allowed. I've seen several versions of this, but this one is my favorite: Either way, the story blew up again last night as the Daily Mail reported on actual instances of women on a beach in Nice being forced to remove clothing and pay fines. While the Daily Mail is not particularly trustworthy on news, a number of other publications have now confirmed the story as well, and pictures are floating around on social media of police forcing women to remove clothing, including one where it's pretty clearly not a burkini at all, but just a large shirt or muumuu of some sort. This seems pretty ridiculous on all sorts of levels, but never think things are so ridiculous that some politicians can't make them worse. Guillaume Champeau from the excellent French site Numerama alerts me to the news that the deputy mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi is threatening to sue those who share these images over social media. Yup, France, a country that claims to pride itself on freedom is not just telling women that they can't cover themselves up too much on the beach, but that it's also illegal to report on the police following through on that. Here's is the awkward Google translation of the French report:

Christian Estrosi ... has published a press release by the city of Nice, to announce that he would file a complaint against those who would broadcast pictures of municipal police verbalize women guilty of exercising what they believed to be their freedom to dress from head to feet on the beaches.

" Photos showing municipal police of Nice in the exercise of their functions have been circulating this morning on social networks and raise defamation and threats against these agents ," the statement said.

Wait. Showing accurate photos creates defamation against the police? How's that work? Estrosi apparently says that legal actions have already been filed, though Numerama was unable to confirm any legal actions as yet. The article also notes that despite Estrosi implying otherwise, police do not have any sort of special protections that say they cannot be photographed while in public.

Either way, it's not clear what this kind of move will accomplish other than making France appear intolerant and petty towards all sorts of freedoms, including religious freedoms and freedom of speech.

Filed Under: burkinis, christian estrosi, cote d'azur, france, free speech, nice, social media