In June 2019, a dozen women supported by an activist collective, the Citizen Alliance, had claimed their right to bathe in burkini.

Their "act of civil disobedience", against swimming pool regulations that they consider discriminatory, then took place in the Jean Bron swimming pool in Grenoble.

Two years later, five women (according to the police, six according to the association) renewed their action by bathing in a burkini, Wednesday around 3:30 p.m. in the same swimming pool in Isère.

The activists were fined and excluded from the establishment for two months, indicates the town hall of Grenoble.

Their presence provoked the evacuation of the basin, at the request of municipal agents, who had blocked access to swimming for ten other women.

This new incident comes after several actions of this collective and tense exchanges between Eric Piolle, the environmental mayor of the city, as well as the government, on this type of swimsuit covering the entire body.

"These methods of action are in their DNA"

This action "was carried out in peace, without violence", specifies Annabelle Bretton, deputy in charge of popular education and open democracy, who then received the activists at the town hall.

“These methods of action are in their DNA.

They are in their niche, and we, quietly, we are in ours, ”assures the elected, while the internal rules of the swimming pool prohibiting these outfits have been applied.

The Citizen Alliance, the association in question, for its part affirms in a press release that its activists "claim the right to choose their swimsuit: covering swimsuit, long-sleeved, short-sleeved or even topless (sic ) ”.

It considers the current regulations "discriminating" and promises to renew its action.

Access to the swimming pool, "a common good" according to Citizen Alliance

“Since 2018, the union of free and veiled Muslim women of the Citizen Alliance has been fighting to access the swimming pool, which, we recall, is a common good,” said the collective in a press release, published on July 16 on Facebook.

He had just organized a “pool party” in the hall of the town hall to ask Eric Piolle to “let women choose their swimsuits.

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On June 18, the elected ecologist had, in a letter to Jean Castex, asked the government to rule at the national level on the ban or not of these jerseys.

Three months earlier, Gérald Darmanin had asked the European Commission to cancel a subsidy granted to a consortium which includes the Citizens' Alliance, which he accuses of "promoting rules compatible with Sharia".

Paris

Activists bathe in burkini and cause the closure of a swimming pool in Paris

Society

Grenoble: After the "burkini" action, the swimming pools remain closed due to a new incident

  • Society

  • Swimming pool

  • Burkini

  • Grenoble

  • Muslim

  • Eric Piolle