VADODARA: Sikh groups led by United Sikhs organization, Akali Dal (Delhi) and Sikh Forum held a peaceful protest outside the French Embassy in Delhi and submitted a memorandum addressed to French President Francois Hollande against the ongoing turban ban in French public schools.
"If
there was any doubt about the legality of France's (turban ban) action,
the eminent jurists of the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) recently
pronounced that France had violated the human rights of both Bikramjit
Singh and Ranjit Singh by denying them their religious right to wear a
turban....The global Sikh community says that France is able to reverse
the turban ban for a photo ID because France has since adopted biometric
ID documents, in compliance with EU regulations, which rely on facial
features and fingerprints and do not require a bare head for the photo
on ID documents," Mejindarpal Kaur, UK based legal director of United
Sikhs stated in the memorandum, that was submitted by a delegation led
by protesters.
"Our argument against the turban ban in schools is that when a Sikh schoolchild removes his turban, his joora(top
knot), which denotes that he is a Sikh, is visible. Hence, the French
law that purports to ban the ostensible display of religious signs in
schools should not apply to the Sikhs because it does not serve its
purpose as a Sikh's religious sign (unshorn hair tied as a joora) will be ostensibly visible when the turban is removed," the memorandum stated.
United
Sikh's India director Gurpreet Singh SAD's Manjit Singh GK and Onkar
Singh Thapar, DGMC's Daljeet Singh and Sikh Forum's RS Chatwwal also
held discussions with Jean-Marc Sere-Charlet, minister counsellor at the
French embassy, after handing over the memorandum.
with thanks : Times of India : LINK
No comments:
Post a Comment