A call against wearing of face covering veil in Italy

Rome: In industrial northern Italian city of Turin a government official has asked the local school board to stop women wearing burqas from picking up children from school. He said it makes difficult to identify those women as true parent of the student.

The request by Maurizio Marrone member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative People of Liberty party prompted after Marrone and other mothers had seen some women fully veiled picking up their children from an elementary school in Turin’s Barriera di Milano.

“Some mothers with children enrolled in the Albert Sabin elementary school in Turin have seen Islamic women wearing the full burqa picking up their children, and I have seen this as well,” Marrone said, adding that the burqa made it impossible for teachers to “verify the identity” of those picking up minors.

Marrone went on to call the wearing of the burqa, the traditional dress of fundamentalist Islamic women, “damaging to the dignity of women”. Marrone also claims the burqa “slows down the process of integration” for immigrants.

In Italy two separate bills were presented in the upper and lower chambers of the Italian Parliament in September this year which aims to end the wearing of face covering veils (burqas) in Italy.

France also voted to ban the burqa. And if women fined wearing burqa and covering their face they can be fined or jailed even.