PARIS – The UN against the ban on wearing the burkini, the costume that also covers head arms and legs used on the beach by Muslim women. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has in fact commented positively on the stop imposed by the French Council of State on the measures desired by some mayors. “These choices do not improve the security situation and instead tend to fuel religious intolerance and the stigmatization of Muslim people in France, especially women”. He then concluded: “Gender equality is not achieved by regulating what women wear from above”.

But the French premier Manuel Valls does not give up: and to defend his decision he even brings up the Marianne, the female figure symbol of the French Republic that represents the values ​​of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, whose iconogradia derives from the famous painting by Eugène Delacroix “The freedom that leads the people to victory” .

Speaking yesterday in Colomiers, in the Upper Garonne, Valls in fact reiterated his no to the Burkini, motivating him with the need to “fight the new Islamic totalitarianism”, recalling that the symbol of the country is precisely that disheveled woman “because free” and with bare breast “because it feeds the people”. But the comparison was little liked: the ecologist Cecile Duflot, former Minister of Territorial Justice, criticized him saying that “Valls would do better not to make disruptions that make him stumble” then posting on Twitter the representation made by women of the banlieue of a Marianne veiled. While the dissident socialist Benoit Hamon, a candidate in the party’s internal primaries, has accused him “of having divided the country during the summer”.