Impunity Watch: Europe

Britain, China Criticized Over Execution

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

LONDON, England - Britain's government is under fire after drawing criticism from the family of a British citizen for failing to prevent his execution yesterday by the Chinese government.

On December 30, Akmal Shaikh, 53, was executed by lethal injection in China for allegedly smuggling heroin in the city of Urumqi in northwest China in 2007. Mr. Shaikh was a British citizen.

Mr. Akmal Shaikh (Source: ABC News)

Mr. Shaikh denied knowledge of possessing the drugs. Shaikh's daughter claimed that he had been conned by Polish drug traffickers into believing that he could become a celebrity in China. Mr. Shaikh  repeatedly brought claims and provided evidence that he was mentally ill. More specifically, he provided a reports from forensic psychologists in Poland and the UK that diagnosed him with delusional psychosis and bipolar disorder.

Shaikh's family was critical of both the legal proceedings provided by China and the British government's effort to prevent the execution. The family indicated in a letter to the Guardian that the Chinese courts ignored multiple requests for a mental health assessment of Shaikh and otherwise "made a mockery of appeals for clemency".

China has defended the execution. The Chinese Embassy in Britain  released a statement that claimed that Shaikh's rights "were properly respected and guaranteed." China also claimed that it gave British concerns and diplomatic outreach adequate consideration.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that he was "appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted". Nonetheless, Britain has indicated that it will not seek resolution of the matter for Mr. Shaikh's family beyond formal criticism of the execution.

This has led Mr. Shaikh's cousins to criticize Britain. In particular, they claim that this episode "is an example of Britain's powerlessness in the world." Moreover, Mr. Shaikh's family accused Britain of hypocritical diplomatic dealings with China, saying that its decision to seek no further action against China is "purely [related to] the fact that China is a powerful country economically."

Britain maintains that it did everything it could through diplomatic outreach. At least 27 attempts were made by various British officials to stop Mr. Shaikh's execution, allegedly.

For more information, please see:

BBC - Akmal Shaikh's family 'outraged' over China execution - 31 December 2009

GUARDIAN - Akmal Shaikh relatives say Britain abandoned him to execution - 31 December 2009

TELEGRAPH - Akmal Shaikh execution leaves Sino-British relations at a low point - 30 December 2009

Serbian Official Resigns Due To Failure To Catch War Criminal

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BELGRADE, Serbia - The failure to capture war criminal Ratko Mladic and bring him to justice has resulted in the resignation of the Serbian government official responsible for capturing him.

Rasim Ljajic had indicated earlier in the year that he would resign if he was unable to capture Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief, and deliver him to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ITCY) by the start of the new year.  Until this development Ljajic had held the responsibility within the Serbian government of tracking down the war criminal who was first indicated by an international tribunal of the Hague in 1995.

Photo: Official Rasim Ljajic has led the Serbian unit in charge of capturing war criminal Ratko Mladic.

Mladic is charged with ordering the killing of approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and orchestrating the 43-month siege of Sarajevo during the Yugoslavia-Bosnian War.  He is indicted for charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity relating to the massacre.

In his resignation letter to the Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, Ljajic indicated that despite his decision to step down he had confidence that the unit he has headed for four years would achieve their objective.  "The past year has been the most successful so far.  We have never worked so hard...and I am certain that such an effort must have results."

After the war between Yugoslavia and the breakaway republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina ended in 1995, Mladic lived free from prosecution in Serbia until recent years, when he then allegedly went into hiding.  The effort to capture Mladic began when a specialized unit was formed, with Ljajic in charge.  In the addition to the formation of a unit created for the purpose of capturing Mladic, the Serbian government has also offered a reward of 1 million euros for his capture.

The efforts of this Serbian unit to track down Mladic and deliver him to the ICTY has been seen as a sticking point in the possibility of Serbia receiving European Union membership in the future.  The government of the Netherlands has blocked Serbia's entry into the EU, demanding that Serbia first must prove its commitment to capturing Mladic and others charged with crimes in the war.

Ljajic will remain in his posts as the Serbian Social Affairs Minister and as president of the National Council for Cooperation, which coordinates Serbian government efforts with the Hague.

For more information, please see:

AFP - Serbian official hunting genocide suspect Mladic resigns - 29 December 2009

AP - Serbian official quits over failure to get Mladic - 29 December 2009

BCC - Serbia minister quits for failing to catch Ratko Mladic - 29 December 2009

EPOCH TIMES - Serbian War Criminal Investigator Steps Down - 29 December 2009

NEW YORK TIMES - Serbian Minister Quits War Crimes Team - 29 December 2009

Report Confirms Russian Lawyer Subjected to Inhumane Conditions in Prison before Death

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia - A twenty page report issued Monday by the Moscow Public Oversight Commission has confirmed allegations that investment-fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was subjected to inhumane conditions and denied necessary medical care before his death. The Moscow Public Oversight Commission is a nongovernmental group empowered under Russian law to monitor human rights conditions in jails and prisons.

Magnitsky,the father of two, died on November 16, 2009 of pancreatitis at the age of thirty seven after he was denied medical treatment during his pre-trial detention in Moscow's notorious Butyrskaya prison.

The Commission reported that authorities deliberately "organized physical and psychological pressure on Sergei Magnitsky." The report also stated that Magnitsky was subjected to conditions tantamount to torture, even by the brutal standards of Russia's prison system. Commission panel member Andrei Babushkin said that Magnitsky was murdered in order to conceal the fraud that he had exposed.

In court filings and notes before his death, Magnitsky alleged that during his eleven months of detention he was subjected to increasingly worsening conditions. He also claimed that he was denied medical care in an effort to force him to testify falsely against William Browder, the U.S.-born British head of Hermitage Capital.

Russian investigators had charged both Browder and Magnitsky with tax evasion. Both men denied the claims against them and publicly accused investigators and other senior officials of stealing $234 million in taxes paid by Hermitage to the Russian government.  Russian authorities have repeatedly denied the allegations. Days before his arrest, Magnitsky named high-ranking Russian interior ministry officials that he claimed participated in the fraud.

After Magnitsky's death and in the wake of public and international outrage, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a criminal probe into the lawyer's death, and fired twenty top prison officials. On Friday, Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov told President Medvedev that Magnitsky's death was "the apotheosis" of the problems regarding the medical treatment of prisoners, and vowed prison reform.

When he was initially imprisoned in November 2008, Sergei Magnitsky was in good health. Diagnosed with gall stones in July, he was transferred to Butyrskaya a week before he was to have undergone a pre-surgery ultrasound. At Butyrskaya, Magnitsky received no medical treatment. He died several hours after he was finally transported back to the hospital by ambulance in mid-November.

The report also exposed the responsibility of a judge at a Moscow court who prolonged Magnitsky's detention by four days before his death, refusing to accept written evidence of his deteriorating medical condition.

In a televised interview last week, Medvedev called for an end to pre-trial detention for persons charged with economic crimes, including tax-related offenses.

He said: "It is necessary to conduct investigations in accordance with the law to seek to obtain quality evidence and not to extract it by other means."

For more information, please see:

AP - Moscow commission slams treatment of jailed lawyer - 28 December 2009

Financial Times - Watchdog slams prisons over Magnitsky death - 28 December 2009

WSJ - Report Slams Treatment of Dead Russian Lawyer - 28 December 2009

Telegraph - Sergei Magnitsky: independent investigation into death of lawyer slams Russia - 28 December 2009

 

Militant Russian Separatists Claim Credit for Killing of Orthodox Priest

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia - The killing of a Russian Orthodox priest last month was the responsibility of a Islamist militant group based in the Northern Caucasus region, according to the website of the separatist group's leader.

Doky Ymarov, the separatist leader, declared on his website earlier this week that "one of our brothers who has never been to the Caucasus took up the oath of [Doky Ymarov] and expressed desire to execute the damned Sysoyev."  The identity or affiliation of the shooter who killed Daniil Sysoyev, the Orthodox priest, last month in the Saint Thomas Church in Moscow has yet to be confirmed.

Ymarov went on to explain that the killing of Sysoyev was brought on by his distribution of pamphlets viewed as insulting to Islam.  "Those in the future who defame Islam and insult the religion of Allah will suffer the fate as Sysoyev."  Ymarov has pledged to unite the various militant Islamist groups in the Caucasus region towards achieving the goal of establishing a separate nation governed by Islamic Sharia law.

Sysoyev had received past death threats for his efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity, as well as his books on his observations of the Russia's responses to Islam's presence in Russia, entitled "An Orthodox Response to Islam".  Sysoyev also published a text encouraging Russian women against marrying Muslim men.

The death of Sysoyev marks the second death of a Russian Orthodox priest in the last two months.  Additionally, according to the Interfax News Agency there have been twenty-six Orthodox priests killed in Russia since 1990.  The Caucasus region has also seen the killing of a number of Islamic clerics in recent years.  The killings of religious leaders have heightened the tensions between the Russian Orthodox Church and the more than twenty million Muslims currently in Russia.

For more information, please see:

AFP - Islamists claim killing of Russian priest - 26 December 2009

RADIO FREE EUROPE - Militants Claim Russian Priest Slaying - 26 December 2009

VOA - Wave of Clergy Killings in Russia - 23 December 2009

TELEGRAPH - Russian priest who criticised Islam assassinated in his church - 20 November 2009

Ireland: Two More Bishops Resign in Wake of Child Abuse Report

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch, Europe

DUBLIN, Ireland - Two more Roman Catholic bishops resigned on Christmas Day in the wake of an investigation into decades of Church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese. Dublin Bishops Éamonn Walsh and Ray Field apologized to abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass. Priests read the bishops' statements to worshipers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland's four million Catholics.

The statement issued by the two bishops stated that they hoped their resignations "may bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims (and) survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologize to them."

The government ordered investigation found that Dublin church leaders shielded more than 170 pedophile priests from the law for decades. Police were informed of the abuse starting in 1995, but the government was not made aware of the breadth of the problem until 2004. 

Earlier this month two other bishops, Donal Murray of Limerick and Jim Moriarty of Kildare, resigned. Their resignations followed the November 26 publication of the three-year investigation by Judge Yvonne Murphy into the concealment of abuse of children by priests for over three decades in the Dublin archdiocese.

The 720-page report exposed abuse cover ups in Dublin from 1940 to 2004, and criticized five retired bishops for transferring pedophile priests to new parishes rather than report them to police. The report also found that even when senior police officers received complaints from parents of abuse victims, they treated the Church as if it was above the law. The report revealed that the police sometimes handed reports of pedophile priests back to the bishops to handle.

The Dublin archdiocese has faced a flood of civil lawsuits from abuse victims since the mid-1990s after former altar boy, Andrew Madden, went public with his abuse story. Madden exposed the Church's efforts to pay him to keep silent and protect a priest who continued to serve. The Church faces an estimated thirty million dollars in legal expenses and settlement costs.

A fifth serving bishop named in the government investigation, Martin Drennan of Galway, asserts that he has done nothing to place children in danger and refuses to resign. He said that he was not called to give evidence before the Murphy Commission and has not yet been given access to the part of the report mentioning him by name.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin welcomed the resignations. Martin said in an interview that the Church "must ensure that the management of the past is entrusted to a new generation of people who think differently."

Ireland's top Catholic churchman, Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, apologized to abuse survivors and their families at a Christmas Eve vigil mass held at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Brady said that clerics had "put the reputation of the church before the safety of little children."

After meeting with Brady and Martin last week, Pope Benedict issued a statement apologizing for the abuse, saying that he "shares the outrage and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland (over) these heinous crimes."

For more information, please see:

Irish Times - Pressure mounts on Galway bishop - 26 December 2009

AFP - Two more Irish bishops quit over child abuse scandal - 25 December 2009

The Canadian Press - 2 more Irish Catholic bishops quit over church's coverup of child abuse by Dublin priests - 25 December 2009

RTE News - Two auxiliary bishops offer to resign - 25 December 2009

Lebedev Arrest Illegal Says Russian Supreme Court

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – The 2003 arrest of a currently incarcerated Russian businessman Platon Lebedev was ruled illegal by the Russian Supreme Court on December 23.

This decision corresponds with a 2007 European Court of Human Rights’ ruling that also determined that Mr. Lebedev’s arrest was illegal. The ECHR ordered Russia to pay 10,000 euros ($14,200) in remuneration.

Mr. Lebedev was the former chief executive of Group Menatep, a holding company that had a majority stake in OAO Yukos, Russia’s largest oil company. He was also the business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a wealthy Russian oligarch who owned OAO Yukos. Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Lebedev were famously prosecuted by then President Vladimir Putin in an effort to consolidate economic power by seizing control of OAO Yukos.

In fact, Mr. Lebedev’s July 2003 arrest symbolized the beginning of Mr. Putin’s campaign against OAO Yukos. Three months later Mr. Khodorkovsky was arrested. The two men were found guilty on trumped up tax and fraud charges and are currently serving eight year sentences.

Other pending charges of embezzlement and money laundering against the men could extend their sentences another 22 years. Mr. Lebedev has said that he will refuse to be present at the commencement of the new trial.


Khodorkovsky (left) and Lebedev (right) during their 2003 trial. Source: Radio Free Europe

The attorneys of the two men reacted to the news with mixed enthusiasm to Wednesday's news. Yevgeny Baru, the lawyer that took Lebedev’s petition to the ECHR, said: “This is nothing more than a reaction to a European court ruling that Russia couldn't ignore. It doesn't change anything. It gives the illusion that justice exists. It’s just a game.”

Mr. Khodorkovsky’s current attorney, Vadim Klyuvgant, on the other hand, praised the ruling as “a good result.” He said that Mr. Khodorovsky has a newfound hope that he will be released because the “Yukos case will be looked at within the framework of the law. Until now, that hasn't been done.”

Ultimately, the decision offers hope to the two men because it indicates that the Russian courts may now be willing to accept future judgments from the ECHR. That court will begin to hear a $100 billion lawsuit by OAO Yukos against the Russian government in January 2010.

For more information, please see:

MOSCOW TIMES – Court Rules Lebedev’s Arrest Illegal – 24 December 2009

BLOOMBERG – Russia Annuls Arrest of Yukos’s Lebedev in 2003, Interfax Says – 23 December 2009

GUARDIAN – Arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky partner illegal, court rules – 23 December 2009

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Russian High Court Declares Khodorkovsky Co-Defendant's Arrest Illegal – 23 December 2009

European Human Rights Court Finds Discrimination In Bosnian Constitution

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch, Reporter

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the national constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina discriminates against Jews and Roma and must be amended.

Currently in Bosnia only Muslim Bosniaks, Roman Catholic Croats, and Christian Orthodox Serbs are allowed to run for political office, while Jews and Roma are forbidden.  This ruling by the European Court of Human rights came about after two activists, Jakob Finci, a Bosnian Jew and the current Bosnian ambassador to Switzerland, and Dervo Sejdic who is of Roma ethnicity, filed a complaint in the Court in 2006.  Past attempts by both men to run for national office in Bosnia were thwarted by the constitutional provision that the Court ruled on.

Following the ruling, Finci applauded the Court's action.  "I am delighted that the European Court has recognized the wrong that was done in the constitution 14 years ago.  The Bosnian politicians need to right the wrongs in the constitution quickly."

Bosnia, as a party to the Convention that established the European Court of Human Rights, is now obligated to amend its Constitution.  In making its decision, the court noted that "authorities must use all available means to combat racism, thereby reinforcing democracy's vision of a society in which diversity is not perceived as a threat but as a source of enrichment."  Bosnia had previously agreed to modify its election laws to put them in line with the European Convention on Human Rights, a requirement for EU membership.

The Bosnian Constitution was drafted as a part of the broader Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the nearly four year war in the former Yugoslavian republic between Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian ethnic groups.  The constitution currently separates the population of the nation between "constituent peoples", including Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs, as opposed to "others", including Jews and Roma.

Past attempts to amend Bosnia's election laws have had little success.

For more information, please see:

AP - Court: Bosnia discriminates against Jews and Roma - 22 December 2009

DW - European Court rules Bosnia's constitution is discriminatory - 22 December 2009

EUROPEAN VOICE - Human rights rebuffs Bosnia - 22 December 2009

RADIO FREE EUROPE - European Court Condemns Bosnia Over Jews - 22 December 2009

VOA - European Court: Bosnia's Constitution Unfair to Jews, Roma - 22 December 2009

Vote Theft and Fraud Leads to Kosovo Vote Do Over

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

PRISTINA, Kosovo – Three municipalities in Kosovo will be forced to re-run their election after allegations of “serious fraud and vote stealing” arising from the December 13 mayoral run-offs. The cities of Prizren, Gjilan, and Lipjan will be required to have another election for the mayoral run-off candidate pending the final decision from the Kosovo Central Election Comission (CEC) in the next several days.

The Kosovo Election Commission on Appeals and Complaints (ECAC) investigated the results of the electoral run-off. ECAC “determined that there was cheating and huge vote stealing in the three municipalities”.  In particular, ECAC chairperson Tahir Rrecah said that the panel discovered false voter lists, significant number of votes beyond the amount of registered voters, and family voting in many precincts, a practice where family members voted instead of the registered voters.

Consequently, they requested that CEC re-run the run-off election in these municipalities instead of correcting the irregularities in another manner, like annulling the votes from the three precincts. The ECAC decision noted: “Annulment of more then 50 per cent of polling stations would not completely express the will of people in those municipalities.”

Officials from PDK, the largest party in Kosovo, said that the party will not contest the ECAC findings. In fact just day after the December 13 run-off, Njazi Kryeziu, a PDK official from Prizren, called for a “repetition of [the] electoral process.” LDK, the second largest party in Kosovo, also supports a re-run. Thus, CEC approval at this point is a mere formality.

The logistics of the re-run will be decided some time in the near future. The ECAC decision recommends that all vote commissioners bechanged, and that more police and CEC officials are present in each polling station. Both changes will prevent a repeat of the December 13 vote fraud and theft.

No date has yet been announced for the vote re-run, but with proper planning and preparation, it will not take place until at least early 2010.

For more information, please see:

BALKAN INSIGHT – Fraud Forces Kosovo Elections Re-Runs – 21 December 2009

SOUTHEAST TIMES – Kosovo commission orders revote in three municipalities – 21 December 2009

KOHA DITORE – Prizren may go to a revote – 16 December 2009

Spanish Legislation Takes First Step Towards Easing Ban on Abortion

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MADRID, Spain - The lower-house of the Spanish parliament voted on Thursday to approve a bill that would legalize access to abortion.  Abortion has in almost all cases been categorizes as an illegal act.  This new legalization would all abortions to be legally carried out for the first fourteen weeks of the pregnancy without any government restrictions.

Currently in Spain abortions are only legal in cases of rape or out of concern for the health of the mother.  And while as a matter of law abortions are very difficult to obtain, in practice many of the 100,000 abortions that are legally performed in Spain are carried out under the mother's health exception.  The bill will now be presented in the upper-house.  If it is approved there, this legislation will face a final vote by the whole parliament.

Legalizing a broader right to access to abortion has been a leading domestic priority for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.  The current Socialist government under Zapatero was able to gather 184 votes in the lower house, Congress of Deputies, by eliminating the most controversial provision of the bill, which would have allowed any woman over the age of 15 the right to have an abortion without their parent's consent.  In reaching the necessary number of votes, the Socialist government joined forces with smaller political parties in the lower house.

The movement towards legalization has been described by its leaders as a fight for women's rights.  The Socialist Party's spokeswoman Carmen Monton declared that this movement is about "...legislating women's right to decide whether to be mothers."

The Catholic Church and Popular Party (PP) have led the opposition to this legislation.  A leader of the PP noted at a rally outside the parliament that the legislation would "[banalize] the meaning of human life."  The Catholic Church has declared that if abortion is legalized, anyone who participates in assisting abortion procedures may face excommunication.

A vote on this bill in the upper house of the parliament is expected to take place in early 2010.

For more information, please see:

AFP - Spanish lawmakers vote to legalise abortion - 18 December 2009

AP - Spanish lawyers vote to ease abortion law - 18 December 2009

EARTHTIMES - Spanish parliament approves liberalization of abortion - 17 December 2009

French Ruling Party Seeks to Ban Wearing of Burqas in Public

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch, Europe

PARIS, France - The party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing for a law absolutely banning wearing of the full-face Islamic veil known as the burqa in public. According to the party's parliamentary leader, Jean-François Copé, the "great majority" of French people believe the veil is "incompatible with the values of the republic" and that there is a need to defend French principles against "extremists."

French intelligence services released findings in October showing that only 367 women in France actually wear the burqa. A separate study by the interior ministry reported that the figure is actually closer to several thousand. The large majority of such women are under the age of thirty, and live in the urban centers of Paris and Marseilles. Twenty six percent are converts to Islam. The report noted that the majority of French Muslims oppose the burqa and fear that the debate will stigmatize their religion.

In right-wing newspaper Le Figaro, Copé wrote that the issue was not about how many women wear the burqa, rather "There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country."

He said further that "Masking one's face in public spaces is not an expression of individual liberty...It's a negation of oneself, a negation of others, a negation of social life."

Copé said that the legislation will be enacted after consultation with Muslim communities "so that this measure is understood for what it is: a law of liberation and not a ban."

The proposed ban underscores a growing tension in France surrounding the debate on French national identity. On Monday, French Families Minister Nadine Morano said that she wanted young Muslims to "love France, find a job, stop wearing their caps back to front - and to stop speaking verlan." Verlan is a popular form of slang in which words are inverted. The remarks prompted an outburst of controversy and debate.

Morano called her critics "Champagne socialists," and said that they "did not want to open their eyes to the integration problems that [France's] young people in the suburbs are having."

France is home to Europe's largest Muslim minority. A panel of thirty two French lawmakers was assembled six months ago to discuss the potential of banning the burqa, and it will report its findings next month after hearing the views of Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, Immigration Minister Eric Besson, and Education Minister Xavier Darcos.

In 2004 France passed a law banning head scarves or any other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools. Some see the proposed burqa ban as part of a long-running debate on how far France is willing to accommodate Islam without undermining their tradition of separating church and state, embodied in a flagship law from 1905. French President Sarkozy recently said that burqas "have no place in France."

The Socialist Party, France's main opposition group, has called on Sarkozy and his coalition, "the Union for a Patriotic Movement," to close the debate before it does further damage.

Some perceive the debate on French national identity and the proposed ban as igniting once latent xenophobia and racism in France. Abdelmalek Bouregba, head of the Islamic Association in Castres, fifty miles east of Toulouse, said that the debates have given ideas to extremists. "Otherwise, they might have anti-Muslim ideas, but they would never act on them...In my view, the national identity debate has stoked tensions."

When Muslim worshipers arrived at the Bilal Mosque in Castres on Sunday they found two pigs ears and a poster of the French flag stapled to the door. A pig's snout dangled from the doorknob with "white power" and "sieg heil" spray-painted on one side, and "France for the French" on the other.

The debate on the proposed burqa ban is scheduled to end with a national conference on February 4, 2010.

For more information, please see:

Washington Post - Tensions grow for Muslims as French debate national identity - 19 December 2009

Irish Times - Senior Sarkozy ally calls for law to ban burqa in public - 17 December 2009

AFP - French ruling party to seek complete burqa ban - 16 December 2009

Radio France Internationale - France to ban full face veil, says ruling party chief - 16 December 2009

Radio France Internationale - Less than 400 women in France wear burqa, says police report - 27 October 2009