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BELGIUM - NEW ATTEMPT
LAUNCHED TO INTRODUCE ANTI-BURQA LAW
30
March 2011
Brussels
- 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 Etterbek, 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.
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