An MP from French President Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique En Marche party led a walkout at the country’s national assembly on Thursday, in protest at the presence of a student union representative wearing a hijab.
Maryam Pougetoux, the spokesperson of the National Union of Students in France (UNEF), was attending a parliamentary inquiry examining the effects of the coronavirus crisis on the country’s youth and children when Anne-Christine Lang declared she was leaving the proceedings.
“I cannot accept that in the centre of the National Assembly, the beating heart of democracy… that we accept that a person appears in a hijab before a parliamentary inquiry committee,” she declared in a video she later posted on her Twitter page.
In a tweet later in the day, Lang stated that she viewed the hijab as a symbol of submission: “As an MP and a feminist, who values republican principles, secular principles and women’s rights,” she wrote, “I cannot accept that someone comes to participate in our work at the National Assembly wearing a hijab, which remains for me, a symbol of submission.”
Under French law, MPs and staff in the parliament building are forbidden from wearing items of clothing or symbols which indicate an adherence to any religion.
However, the ruling does not apply to visitors who are asked to contribute to inquiries and parliamentary committees. Other MPs from the conservative Les Republicains party followed Lang by leaving the room.
Lang’s fellow party MP Sandrine Morch, who chaired the session, warned Lang she would not allow “this phoney debate about the hijab” to invade the inquiry, which was “supposed to work on the future and the present of young people in a very difficult situation”.
“Under the pretext of feminism, racist remarks are made,” Melanie Luce, the president of UNEF, commented after the walkout. “Today, a veiled woman should not be accepted in the assembly, another shouldn’t be able to go to the museum because of her cleavage. We don’t differentiate between women.”
Luce was referencing an incident earlier this month when the Musee d’Orsay in Paris was criticised for preventing a French literature student from entering the building for wearing a low-cut dress.
A number of social media users criticised Lang for her decision and for declaring the hijab to be a symbol of “submission”.
