The jewelers of Pune, on strike against the "burka" for fear of more robberies

New Delhi, December 29, 2006. - Thousands of jewelers in the western Indian city of Pune today closed their shops to ask for police protection before a wave of robberies that took them even threatened to prohibit access to their stores of women dressed in the " burka "Muslim.
The fear of the jewelers the "burka" has no religious basis or feminist, but lies in the fact that in three of the most recent robbery, the thieves entered the premises dressed in the garment covering face and body by integer and is, therefore, useful for criminals.
Covering their identity with the "burqa," the thieves made ​​off with 17,000 euros in three stores in the neighborhood of Raviwar Peth, which concentrates the jewelers of Pune in Maharashtra region of India.
However, the total amount stolen is almost two million in the last six months in the Puna area jewelry, a city of about 4.5 million people have registered eight steals, according to industry sources.
Jewelers, tired of the insecurity, on Wednesday wrote a petition to the Minister of Interior of the region, RR Patil, to allow them to put a restriction on the entry of women with "burkas" in their stores, and decided to close the stores today as a measure of pressure.
According to EFE said the president of the Jewellers Association of Maharashtra region, Fatechand Ranka, more than 5,000 shops in a radius of 150 kilometers threw the locks, waiting for the Government to react to the amount stolen.
"It's OK to allow passage to a veiled woman, but you do not know if a woman or a man until he shows his face," said the newspaper "Hindustan Times" Ravi Aganani jeweler.
Although the Minister of Interior refused yesterday to be aware of the controversy, an initiative to ban the "burqa" drew criticism from the Commission on Minorities of the region, calling it a "dangerous" because it "violates the rights of women ".
"A woman has the right to wear whatever she wants, should have the option of wearing a burqa or jeans. We call on all communities to condemn the decision "of jewelers, said Nasim Siddiqui, director of the Commission, quoted by IANS.
However, the jewelers see it differently: "We have no religious bias-Ranka stated, there is no choice but to safeguard our business interests."
Given the controversy, the jewelers today decided to withdraw its lawsuit against the ban on "burqas" but requested that, at least, the women remove the veil off the security cameras of stores, to record their faces before access the interior of the premises and thus prevent theft.
After threatening to hang on doors of shops signs reading "no burkas", jewelers are willing to negotiate to not "offend the sensibilities of any community," said Ranka, because they are driven by a "no anti-Muslim sentiment" .
"We just want to protect our security," the jeweler, upon leaving a meeting with the police authorities was "satisfactory."
With 138 million practitioners, Muslims make up the largest minority religious (13.4 percent of the population) in India, a predominantly Hindu country.

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