Thursday, June 09, 2016

Waitress Beaten on French Riviera for 'Serving Alcohol' During Ramadan


Waitress Beaten on French Riviera for 'Serving Alcohol' During Ramadan
waitress in a cafe in central Nice has filed a police complaint after she was allegedly assaulted by two men because she refused to “stop serving alcohol” on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. 
The alleged beating in the French Riviera town historically famed for its sun, palm-fringed beach front and quality of life, has prompted a heated political debate over whether the country is increasingly becoming prey to “religious fundamentalism and ghettoised communities”. 
The issue has become increasingly fraught less than a year before presidential elections and just six months after Islamist attacks in Paris killed 130. 
The incident took place less than a week before football fans descend on the sun-kissed town for Sunday’s Euro 2016 football match between Poland and Northern Ireland. 
The waitress, a French 30-year-old of Tunisian origin, said she was serving drinks at Monday lunch on the terrace of the Vitis CafĂ© on Nice’s rue Lamartine, near the rue d’Anglais, when two men started haranguing her, insulting the young woman because she was serving alcoholic beverages to customers. 
“I was all alone in the bar when two passers-by suddenly appeared. 
They pointed to the bottles of alcohol behind the bar, then one of them told me in Arabic: ‘You should be ashamed of yourself serving alcohol in the Ramadan period.’

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