Debate about burkinis escalating on the beach in Italy: A fight “that must be carried out to the end” or “conduct punishable by law”?
Trieste – Last Sunday (August 13) there was a scandal among bathers on a beach in Italy. This was due to their differing views on whether Muslim women should wear body-covering clothing when bathing in the water. It should have come to a big riot, so a report South Tyrol News. Several bathers are said to have called out to the women: “You don’t bathe here”.
Other bathers then jumped to the side of the Muslim women on the beach near Trieste. These referred to freedom of religion and the “constitutional right to be able to bathe as you please, as everyone pleases”, according to the information provided by the South Tyrol News. The situation only calmed down again when the lido’s security service intervened.
Burkini scandal in Italy: fight “that must be carried out to the end”
At the political level, the incident then triggered further discussions in Italy. So declared the mayor of Trieste, Roberto Dipiazza South Tyrol News: “When you come to Italy, you know which country you are coming to. So you have to adapt.” Also the mayor of the small town of Monfalcone, just a few kilometers from Trieste, Anna Maria Cisint, who, according to the local newspaper, is the Muslim community Trieste Great had previously called for “western beach customs” to be observed, agrees with her colleague.
“We are working on an appropriate regulation that would ban sea bathing with clothing, burkini or otherwise covered,” she announced. She rejects the accusation of racism. On the contrary, she was “proud of having the determination to break through the wall of hypocrisy and false tolerance of customs and customs that contradict any sense of citizenship,” the news portal quoted the mayor as saying. In her eyes, the question of swimwear is “an aspect of the struggle of our civilization and tradition that must be carried out to the end”.
Italy: Threatening Muslim women is ‘illegal behavior punishable by law’
However, Cisint and Dipiazza are also met with opposition. The President of ICS – a non-profit organization that supports local asylum seekers and refugees – Gianfranco Schiavone addressed the incident in a press release and harshly criticized it. Wearing clothing while swimming in the sea does not pose a risk to safety or public health and is therefore an expression of an inviolable freedom protected by the legal order.
He sees the behavior of the bathers, who verbally attacked the Muslim women, as “extremely serious”. The women were “expressly threatened”, an “illegal and criminally punishable behavior”. Schiavone also recalled that the task of a democratic state is “to defend people’s rights and freedoms”. Modern societies would be characterized by a protection of all forms of diversity and the coexistence of different cultures.
Burkini dispute in Europe: “I’m not a criminal because I don’t want to swim half-naked”
The ICS urged “the women who have been subjected to the threats” to contact their offices to “listen and discuss to protect them” and called on the “brave” citizens who witnessed the threats to make themselves available as witnesses. Similar discussions about wearing body-covering swimwear have already taken place in several EU countries.
In Grenoble, France, a vote to allow Muslim women to wear full-body swimsuits known as “burkini” caused anger. And in Austria, too, Muslim women have reported restrictions on their swimwear in the past. In Lower Austria, a young woman declared: “I am not a criminal because I don’t want to bathe half-naked“. (n/a)
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