CAIRO: Fayoum University must respect a legal ruling upholding the right of female students wearing the niqab, or full-face veil, to re-sit examinations, an NGO said this week. In a statement entitled “the punishment of female students for their beliefs must stop,” NGO the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said that it has issued a legal warning to the president of Fayoum University demanding that a legal ruling issued in favor of a group of students be respected. The ruling quashed a university decree canceling exams that the students were scheduled to sit in January and obliged the university to form a special committee so that the students affected could re-sit the exam. “It is unacceptable that the university's administration is determined to use its powers to implement a discriminatory policy against female students wearing the niqab,” EIPR lawyer Hoda Nasrallah is quoted as saying in the statement, issued on Wednesday. “The university must implement the court's verdict and allow female students to sit exams without delay. Its continued refusal to do so will prevent the students from graduating this year,” Nasrallah continues. The university cancelled the exams in psychology and society when the students, who are in their final year in the faculty of education, wore medical masks in the exams as an alternative to the niqab, which students were banned from wearing this year. The policy was deemed a violation of “the personal freedom enshrined in the constitution” and is “tarnished by an arbitrary use of power.” “The university's administration misused its power several times, firstly when it issued a decree banning the wearing of niqabs in exams and then again when it cancelled exams in this subject for female students despite the fact that they had not violated either the universities' law or its implementing statute in any way” Nasrallah is quoted as saying. “The university is now challenging court verdicts and failing to implement a ruling correcting these transgressions,” Nasrallah adds. In January 2010 an administrative court upheld an education ministry decision to ban women wearing the niqab during exams. In a statement issued in January EIPR described the policy as “excessive” and that “the ban's declared objective of preventing cheating during exams could be achieved through less drastic measures.”
