LR deputies and an elected LREM left a hearing in the Assembly on Covid-19 and youth on Thursday, to protest against the presence of a veiled student unionist, the vice-president of UNEF, Maryam Pougetoux.
A "false debate" according to Sandrine Mörch (LREM) who chaired the meeting.
LR deputies and an elected LREM left a hearing in the Assembly on Covid-19 and youth on Thursday, to protest against the presence of a veiled student unionist, a "false debate" according to the walker who chaired the meeting.
The parliamentarians participated in the hearing of representatives of student unions within the framework of the new commission of inquiry "to measure and prevent the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on children and youth", created on the initiative of the Communist Marie-George Buffet (Seine-Saint-Denis) who is the rapporteur.
"A deliberate communitarian act" according to an LR deputy
After the speech of the student unionists, the deputy of Pas-de-Calais (LR) Pierre-Henri Dumont, making a "point of order", was indignant at the veil worn by the vice-president of the UNEF, Maryam Pougetoux, considering that it was a "deliberate communitarian act" which violated "the principle of secularism to which our assembly must adhere".
The argument was attacked by the president of the commission, the elected representative of Haute-Garonne Sandrine Mörch, who deplored a "bad trial" by recalling that "no rule prohibits (knows) the wearing of signs religious for those auditioned ".
LR deputies left the room
The LR deputies who left the room were joined by Anne-Christine Lang (LREM), for whom the "wearing of the hijab" is "incompatible" with her "values".
"I can not accept that within the National Assembly, the beating heart of democracy (...), we allow a person to appear in a hijab before a commission of inquiry", she said. indicated.
"As a deputy and feminist, attached to republican values, secularism and women's rights, I cannot accept that a person comes to participate in our work at the NA in hijab, which remains for me a mark of submission "she added in a tweet.
A "false debate", for Sandrine Mörch, LREM MP
Her colleague Sandrine Mörch replied that she would not let "this false debate around the veil enter this commission supposed to work on the future and the present of young people in a very complicated situation".
Maryam Pougetoux was at the heart of a controversy in 2018 when several political figures, including Marlène Schiappa, then Secretary of State for Gender Equality, criticized the UNEF, a left-wing student union, for having appointed a student veiled as a spokesperson.