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"How should France go about banning the burqa?" According to Libération, the country's right-wing government is increasingly divided over the issue. On 12 January, to put an end to ongoing squabbles, Prime Minister François Fillon proposed a non-binding text indicating the parliament's opposition to the burqa — an initiative that will subsequently pave the way for a law to impose an outright ban on wearing the garment in public. If such a law is passed, the daily notes that "France will be the only country in the world to instruct police to arrest young women, who will be victims rather than criminals." Worse still, many legal experts believe that such a law cannot be sanctioned because it fails to respect the principle of freedom of religion, "enshrined in the French constitution and international law," most notably by the European Convention on Human Rights. Attempts to introduce a similar ban in Denmark had to be abandoned for this reason.
