A committee in Belgium’s lower chamber of parliament approved Wednesday a law outlawing burqas and other kinds of Islamic face veils – relaunching efforts to introduce the ban nearly one year after they were thwarted by a government crisis.
The law seeks to punish anyone caught in public places with their face completely or partly covered – thus preventing their identification – with fines between 15 to 20 euros (21 to 35 dollars) and/or up to seven days’ imprisonment.
The draft law still needs to be approved by the full Chamber of Deputies and by the Senate, Belgium’s upper house.
A similar bill won backing from the Chamber last April, but was still waiting to be approved by the Senate when a linguistic squabble between Belgium’s French- and Dutch-speaking politicians led to parliament being dissolved, triggering early elections.
The bill was reintroduced by the centre-right French-speaking Mouvement Reformateur (MR), which stressed the need for a national law outlawing burqas after judges in January scrapped a local ban imposed in Etterbeek, a district of Brussels, the Belga news agency said.
Like last year, all other parties backed the proposal except for the French- and Dutch-speaking Green parties, which renewed calls for Belgium’s top administrative court to review the constitutionality of such a ban before it is introduced.
Via Islam in Europe