The government of the state of New South Wales has drafted legislation requiring Muslim women to remove veils and show their faces to police on request or risk not just a fine, but a prison sentence as well.
The legislation in Aus-tralia’s most populous state has drawn criticism as culturally insensitive.
The legislation was prompted by a confrontation between a police officer and an Australian woman who is a convert to Islam.
The law would not ban the burqa or veil or any other clothing.
A vigorous debate over the pro posal reflects the cultural clashes ignited by the growing influx of Muslim immigrants. Until 1973, Australian had an “all-white” immigration policy that only accepted immigrants from Europe and North America. Since then many Asian Orientals have arrived and society has accepted them, but the recent influx of Muslims has disconcerted many.
Under the law proposed by the government of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, a woman who defies police by refusing to remove her face veil could be sentenced to a year in prison and fined 5,500 Australian dollars ($5,900).
The bill — to be voted on by the state parliament soon — has been condemned by civil libertarians and many Muslims as an overreaction to a traffic offense case involving a Muslim woman driver in a “niqab,” or a veil that reveals only the eyes.
The government says the law would require motorists and criminal suspects to remove any head coverings so that police can identify them.
Critics say the bill smacks of anti-Muslim bias given how few women in Australia are veiled. In a population of 23 million, only about 400,000 Australians are Muslim. Community advocates estimate that fewer than 2,000 women wear face veils, and it is likely that a smaller percentage drives.
“It does seem to be very heavy handed, and there doesn’t seem to be a need,” said Australian Council for Civil Liberties spokesman David Bernie. “It shows some cultural insensitivity.”
France and Belgium have banned face-covering veils in public. Quebec is considering legislation to restrict veiling. Typical arguments are that there is a need to prevent women from being forced into wearing veils by their families or that public security requires people to be identifiable.
“It is a religious issue here,” said Mouna Unnjinal, a mother of five who has been driving in Sydney with a niqab for 18 years and has never been booked for a traffic offense. “We’re going to feel very intimidated and our privacy is being invaded,” she said.
Unnjinal said she would not hesitate to show her face to a policewoman. But she fears male police officers might misuse the law to deliberately intimidate Muslim women.
“If I’m pulled over by a policeman, I might say I want to see a female police lady and he says, ‘No, I want to see your face,’” Unnjinal said. “Where does that leave me? Do I get penalized $5,000 and sent to jail for 12 months because I wouldn’t?”
Sydney’s largest newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, declared the proposal “the world’s toughest burqa laws.” In France, wearing a burqa — the all-covering garment that hides the entire body except eyes and hands — in public is punishable by a 150-euro ($217) fine only.
The New South Wales state cabinet decided to create the law on July 4 in response to Police Commissioner Andrew Scip-ione’s call for greater police powers. Other states including Victoria and Western Australia are considering similar legislation.
“I don’t care whether a person is wearing a motorcycle helmet, a burqa, niqab, face veil or anything else — the police should be allowed to require those people to make their identification clear,” State Premier Barry O’Farrell said in a statement.
The laws were motivated by the bungled prosecution of Carnita Matthews, a 47-year-old Muslim mother of seven who was booked by a highway patrolman for a minor traffic violation in Sydney in June last year.
An official complaint was made in Matthews’ name against Senior Constable Paul Fogarty, the policeman who gave her the ticket. The complaint accused Fogarty of racism and of attempting to tear off her veil during their roadside encounter.
Unknown to Matthews, the encounter was recorded by a camera inside Fogarty’s squad car. The video footage showed her aggressively berating a restrained Fogarty and did not support her claim that he tried to grab her veil before she reluctantly and angrily lifted it to show her face.
Matthews was sentenced in November to six months in jail for making a deliberately false statement to police.
But that conviction and sentence were quashed on appeal last month because a judge was not convinced it was Matthews who signed the false statutory declaration. The woman who signed the document had worn a burqa and a justice of the peace who witnessed the signing had not looked beneath the veil to confirm her identity.
That courtroom outcome has prompted the legislation to demand that a veiled woman show her face to the authorities on demand.
