French Lawmakers Boycott Hearing of Veiled Student Leader Amid COVID-19 Youth Impact Inquiry

This hearing is part of the new inquiry commission tasked with "measuring and preventing the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on children and youth", reports La Croix. The deputy Marie-George Buffet is the initiator and rapporteur. While the proceedings were proceeding normally last Thursday, the presence of the veiled student activist caused tensions within the National Assembly.

Taking the floor, the deputy from Pas-de-Calais (LR) Pierre-Henri Dumont expressed his indignation. He made a "point of order". According to him, the fact that the vice-president of UNEF wore a veil is a "choice to violate the principle of secularism to which the Assembly must submit". For the elected official, the presence of the veiled student is a "communitarian demonstration", a "premeditated attack".

The chairwoman of the commission, the elected official from Haute-Garonne, Sandrine Mörch, does not share this view. For her, it is nothing more than a "bad trial" because "no rule prohibited the wearing of religious symbols for the persons heard". To express their disagreement, the deputies preferred to leave the working session. The deputy Anne-Christine Lang (LREM) followed suit. "I cannot accept that within the National Assembly, the beating heart of democracy (...), we accept that a person presents herself in a hijab before an inquiry commission," she fumed angrily, hammering that the "wearing of the hijab" is "incompatible" with her "values".

"As a deputy and a feminist, attached to republican values, to secularism and to women’s rights, I cannot accept that a person comes to participate in our work at the National Assembly in a hijab, which remains for me a mark of submission," she tweeted. Sandrine Mörch disapproves of her colleague’s position. She says she does not tolerate "this false debate around the veil entering this commission supposed to work on the future and present of youth in a very complicated situation".