#WearWhatYouWant: London burkini ban protesters throw "beach party" outside French embassy

Demonstrators have staged an impromptu beach party complete with sand, deck chairs and a lobster-shaped lilo outside the French embassy in London to protest against burkini bans that have become law in many French coastal towns and cities.

Under the bemused gaze of the embassy’s armed police officers, some protesters sported burkinis – swimsuits that cover the wearer’s whole body, including her hair – or swimsuits, while others threw beach balls at the lunchtime protest.

Shortly after midday, a van pulled up and deposited several sacks of sand, to the consternation of police officers. The 40 or so protesters set up deck chairs and brandished placards among a scrum of journalists.

Esmat Jeraj, a campaigner at Citizens UK and one of the protest’s organisers, said the argument that the burkini was a symbol of repression “needs to be turned on its head”. “A lot of women wear it by choice,” she said. “If the burkini enables women to go and sit on the beach and enjoy the sunshine, surely that should be encouraged. It helps ensure these women are no longer on the margins.”

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Several said they joined the protest after seeing photos on Wednesday that appeared to show a woman remove a long-sleeved top and leggings at the request of armed police officers who reportedly fined her on a beach in Nice. Another woman reported being reprimanded by police and given a ticket saying she had failed to wear “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”.

Jenny Dawkins, a curate at the All Saints Church of England church in Peckham, said she had found the photos “genuinely chilling”. “If it was a nun sitting on the beach she wouldn’t be targeted in this way,” she said.

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