MONFALCONE - - Bathers have dressed in a variety of different clothes as part of a protest against the anti-burqini rhetoric of their mayor, Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reports.

 This flash mob style event was against the crusade launched by Monfalcone's mayor, Anna Cisint, a Northern League sympathiser, who would like to prevent Muslim women from going to the beach dressed in burqinis which adhere to their religion and customs.

 At Marina Julia, a popular spot on the coast near Monfalcone, several hundred people gathered on Monday as part of the initiative by the Monfalcone Interethnic Association. 

 Carabinieri, policemen and Special Branch police officers were in control, Fatto adds.

 The mayor had written verbatim: “The behaviour of Muslim foreigners who habitually enter the water with their clothes on is unacceptable. It is a practice that creates unbearable consequences from the point of view of safeguarding the decorum of the place. Those who come from a different reality to ours have an obligation to respect the rules and customs that apply in the local and Italian context.”

 She added: “Forms of 'Islamisation' of our territory, which extend practices of dubious value from the point of view of decorum and hygiene, generating the overturning of every rule of social coexistence, cannot be accepted.”

 Numerous local administrators were also in the sea with their clothes on. The president of the Monfalcone Interethnic Association, Arturo Bertoli, had recommended “moving in small groups of four trying not to disturb anyone.”

 Followers of the initiative all gathered together in front of the Number One concession, followed on sight by two urban police officers. Bathers watched with curiosity. 

 Bertoli then commented: “The association would like to thank all those who wanted to take part in this cheerful and determined initiative to oppose the intolerant and outdated tirade by the mayor Cisint. She has once again been covered in criticism from half of Italy.” 

 He further explained: “Even the mayors of Veneto have declared that inclusion is also important for tourism. But not her, she only ever wants to divide the city by riding roughshod over, and spreading, intolerance.”

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