France: Gov't wants to outlaw balaclavas during protests

From France 24 :

10 Apr, 2009

After recent violent acts of vandalism that rocked protests in Bastia and Strasbourg, French Interior Minister Michele Alliot Marie has announced her intention to crack down on “those who hide their faces beneath masks and balacalavas”.

Recent clashes in Strasbourg during the Nato summit and again in the Corsican city of Bastia… For French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, enough is enough. It is high time to do something against violent protestors who face off against police and damage property. Her solution: to forbid protestors from wearing masks, hoodies and balaclavas during rallies.
 
“I've established that, within the crowds of protestors, there are a certain number of people who haven't come to defend their ideas at all, but to wreak havoc while hidden in the crowd under their balaclavas,” she declared at Wednesday's council of ministers.
 
Alliot Marie asked her team to come up with quick measures against this kind of incident, resulting in a new bill which may be introduced in the Lopsi,  France's main reference law concerning domestic security.
 
Members of the ruling UMP party have started to tackle the issue. MP and UMP member Didier Julia proposed a bill aiming to outlaw “the wearing of balaclavas or any other means to mask one's face during public protests and gatherings".

The bill is directly inspired by an existing German law, in force since 1985, that forbids all people from taking part in a protest “in any kind of dress that conceal's one's identity, or gives the possibility of concealing it”. Those who break this law risk a fine at best, and at worse, a prison sentence.
 
Difficult to enforce

The German police has not assessed the effectiveness of the law, but for Oliver Tolle, head of Berlin's police forces, it makes a real difference: “Thanks to the ban on balaclavas, we can identify and arrest people who are preparing acts of violence more easily ” he claims.

In reality, the law remains difficult to enforce. And it didn't stop protests against the G8 summit in Rostock (in the north of Germany) from turning violent. Youths wearing masks violently clashed with police forces in a cloud of tear gas and smoke.

In Greece, where weeks of violent riots broke out after the police killing of a teenager, the government has also announced its intention to outlaw the wearing of balaclavas during protests. “We have planned certain measures to guarantee civil peace, notably by ruling that wearing a balaclava when committing an offence will bring a harsher sentence,” declared Greek Justice Minister Nicos Dendias on February 17.