SNS Proposes to Regulate Veiling of Face in Public

Bratislava, October 7 (TASR) – The co-governing Slovak National Party (SNS) on Saturday announced that it views it as necessary to introduce legislation “regulating appropriately” veiling the face in public in order to make it easier for the security forces to identify perpetrators of crimes.

According to an SNS press release, criminal elements are ever more frequently using masks and other ways to cover their faces in order to evade electronic surveillance in public areas.

“Complete or partial veiling of one’s face … makes it impossible to identify both directly and also electronically at checkpoints people who visit various sporting and cultural events, passengers on public transport and customers in banks, malls and shops, which frequently draw the attention of criminal elements and terrorists,” stated SNS chairman Andrej Danko’s office director Zuzana Skopcova, adding that several countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey are currently introducing legislative measures to regulate the veiling of faces in public.

SNS proposes that people in Slovakia should be obliged when in public to have their faces “unveiled and recognisable from the hairline down to the chin, so that trouble-free and rapid identification will be possible if necessary”.

People with specific reasons and health issues, plus people carrying out jobs that require them to cover their faces would be exempt from the veiling ban, stated SNS.