Participants in the World Naked Bike Ride near Lyon, France. Credit: AFP/Olivier Chassinol
Seven stages of the so-called “nude Tour de France” have been banned for public indecency under restrictions that climate activists have called “state intimidation.”
Cyclists take part in the worldwide Naked Bike Ride, an annual event that began in London in 2004 and crossed the capital last year without raising an eyebrow. However, since the tour began in Nantes, western France, on August 8, seven shows have been banned by local authorities.
Those who blocked the tour cited the penal code, which “equates nudism with sexual exhibitionism on a public dike,” said François Fentin, president of Le Mouvement Naturiste (Naturist Movement), which organizes the trip. Public indecency is punishable by up to a year in prison and a €15,000 (£12,800) fine in France.
Dauntless participants
Dauntless bikers were eager to continue their tour to draw attention to climate change, biodiversity and nudism. But at the beginning of one stage in Millau near Clermont-Ferrand, central France, police blocked the path of a naked peloton and arrested 59-year-old Mr. Fentin.
“In France, when you want to talk about serious risks, planet is colliding, you are being treated as an ecoterrorist and sex offender,” he said.
Mr Fentyn criticized his arrest as a form of “state intimidation” and a blatant attempt to dissuade the 15 or so participants from continuing.
“In London, they gathered 5,000 people without any problems. And so it was in all the democratic countries of the world,” he told the French newspaper Le Figaro, adding that he intends to sue. “The only bans were in dictatorships and very religious countries.”
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