The Beaux Gendarmes

Amnesty International condemns the detention of several people, including two women wearing the full-face veil, who were protesting against the law banning the wearing of any form of clothing concealing one's face in public.

The law came into force today. Police said the people were detained for joining an unauthorised protest in central Paris.

Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme Director John Dalhuisen said:

“Women in France have the right to freedom of religion and expression. They must also be free to protest when this right is violated.

Amnesty is quite right of course.  This ban is ludicrous, not to mention sinister.  The ludicrousness is what strikes me most.

 

We're public guardians bold yet wary
And of ourselves we take good care
To risk our precious lives we're chary
When danger looms we're never there
But when we meet a helpless woman
Or little boys who do no harm
We run them in, we run them in
We run them in, we run them in
We show them we're the beaux gendarmes.

Actually the women haven't been that helpless and have been flagrantly breaking the law.  Penalty:- a fine and citizenship classes.  If any law was pointlessly bossy, this one is. 

Frenchwomen used to wear veils, e.g. Madame Bovary:-

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves.

It didn't protect her sexual virtue.

Comments

[Andrew Coates]

The law is rightly opposed by most of the French left. It is criticised because it is not universal but directed to a particular section of the population (unlike, say the universal anti-religious symbol rules in state schools).

But it should be emphasised that the same left, including its strong North African component, is, unlike the British one, very clear about opposing the Burka and Niqab.

And it should be noted that these protests are not spontaneous and far from being simply initiated by women.

The latest one (today) has been organised by Rachid Nekkaz, a self-publicist, and former would-be Presidential candidate.

Plus I much prefer l'Education Sentimentale to Madame Bovray.