Three anti-burqa protestors tried to enter Australia's Parliament House on Monday wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, a niqab and a motorcycle helmet.
Sergio Redegalli, Nick Folkes, and Victor Waterson, all residents of Sydney, called for a ban on wearing the burqa and said that they were subjected to unjust treatment due to the new regulations on wearing it.
The three men, who call their protest movement 'Faceless", oppose the wearing of burqa in public spaces. They also criticized the political ideology of Islam saying that it was contrary to Australian beliefs, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.
"They have one rule for Muslim women and another for everybody else, and it's utterly sexist," Redegalli said, reports the Associated Press.
When the three men reached the front door of the Parliament, a security guard told Redgalli that he would not be permitted to enter the building wearing the Ku Klux Klan hood. The guard told Waterson that he also cannot wear his full face motor helmet. Though Folkes was first told that he could enter the building wearing his niqab, he was told later that he cannot wear it inside.
Reacting to the incident, the Department of Parliamentary Services said in a statement that "protest paraphernalia" cannot be used inside Parliament House. It also said that helmets had long been banned from being worn in the building due to security reasons.
Earlier this month, the Department of Parliamentary Services had announced that people with facial coverings would not be permitted to enter open public galleries of the Parliament's House of Representatives and Senate. They were restricted to galleries usually reserved for schoolchildren with soundproof glass.
However, Australia's Parliament House last week lifted the ban. Under the new regulations, people would have to remove face covering momentarily at the security check points at the front door so that staff could identify any person who may have been banned from entering Parliament House or who may be known, or discovered, to be a security risk.
