Photos of a woman in a burkini checked by the Nice police are controversial

Photos of a police check on a beach in Nice (south-east), showing a woman, headscarf over her hair, taking off her tunic in front of officers, sparked outrage on the internet on Wednesday and reignited the controversy around the ban of the burkini by several cities in France.

The decision of several municipalities on the Côte d'Azur to ban from their beaches outfits that do not respect secularism, in particular the burkini, which covers the body from head to ankles, has for several days been provoking a fiery debate in France and abroad. 'foreign. On Tuesday evening, the British tabloid Daily Mail posted a series of photos - unsourced and undated - showing four municipal police officers checking a lady dozing in the sun on a beach on the famous Promenade niçoise, hit on July 14 by a bloody jihadist attack (86 dead).

This woman is dressed and wears a turquoise and white scarf tied above the neck and a long-sleeved tunic of the same color, which she then removes under the watchful eye of the police, without it being known whether she is acting on orders. of these or on its own initiative. The town hall of Nice, contacted by AFP, was not able to immediately specify the circumstances of this control. But she confirmed that about fifteen women had been fined since the beginning of the week, because of their beach attire. On Tuesday, a mother fined on August 16, when she was veiled and wore leggings and a tunic on a beach in Cannes, announced her intention to contest this fine.

The images of the Nice control on Wednesday aroused a deluge of reactions from Internet users denouncing "a humiliation" and "a hunt for the veil" making them "ashamed" or giving them "hate". "They want to take off his clothes. But let them take off their uniforms! The police of shame", reacted Marwan Muhammad, the president of the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) who sued the municipal decrees with the League of Human Rights. "Question of the day: how many armed police does it take to force a woman to undress in public?" indignantly tweeted Human Rights Watch's European communications director, Andrew Stroehlein.

American actress Susan Sarandon also tweeted the photos with the comment: "French police enforce burkini ban by ordering a mother to remove her Muslim outfit". French justice has twice validated these decrees, which are the subject of an appeal before the highest administrative body in the country, the Council of State. This will examine the issue on Thursday, with the delicate mission of deciding on the legality of these controversial bans.