(Swiss Info) Swiss parliamentarians have rejected a right-wing call for an outright ban on the wearing of face coverings, such as burkas, in public.
The text rejected on Thursday by the Senate is a people’s initiative aiming to completely ban face coverings — whether religious coverings like veils or more prosaic hoods sometimes favoured by hooligans.
The proposal, which was handed in with the requisite 100,000 signatures in September 2017, was judged to be too extreme by politicians in Switzerland[’s] smaller chamber of parliament, some of whom said that a ban would be discriminatory against Muslims and contravene the freedom of religion.
Backers of the initiative — mainly right-wing politicians — claimed the move was necessary to combat “Islamisation” and fundamentalism, and to safeguard public security.
