Australian senator Pauline Hanson expelled from parliament for 7 days for wearing burqa to demand its ban

An Australian senator who has long campaigned for the country to ban the female Islamic garment known as the burqa has been suspended from parliament for a week over her protest on Monday in which used full body cover on camera and refused to remove it.

Pauline Hanson, of the anti-immigration One Nation party, was accused of racism by fellow lawmakers when she entered parliament wearing a burqa on Monday. Hanson called the move, which he has already made twice in a decade, a protest against his colleagues’ refusal to allow him to introduce a bill that would ban burqas and other face coverings in public.

Once inside, Hanson refused to remove her burqa, causing the Senate to be suspended for the rest of that day.

The protest was met with outrage by some of her fellow senators, with Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters calling it “a middle finger to people of faith”.

“It’s extremely racist and unsafe,” Waters added.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 55-5 on a motion condemning Hanson’s actions as “intended to vilify and mock people for their religion” and calling them “disrespectful of Muslim Australians.”

Following the motion, Hanson was banned from sitting for seven consecutive days in the Senate, which will mean his suspension will continue when parliament returns to session in February next year after its vacation.

Speaking to Sky News Australia, Hanson rejected accusations that his protest had vilified or mocked Muslims.

“At the end of the day, this is Australia. It’s not the Australian cultural way of life. I just want equality for all Australians and I don’t want to see the suppression or oppression of women in this country,” she told the news channel.

Hanson already wore a burqa in Parliament in 2017, but this week was the first time she was punished for it. When he did so in 2017, he said it was to highlight what he called security issues posed by the garment, which he linked to terrorism.