A/59/366 torture or ill-treatment to try to force them to abandon their faith. In August 2003, 57 school students on a compulsory course at Sawa military barracks were reportedly arrested and put in metal shipping containers in harsh conditions amounting to torture, because they were found to have Bibles in their possession. Over 330 members of minority faiths are currently said to be detained in different parts of the country. 31. On 14 June 2004, the Special Rapporteur sent information alleging that Full Gospel Church leaders Haile Naizgi and Dr. Kiflu Gebremeskel had been arrested at their homes in Asmara on 23 May 2004. In another case, Tesfatsion Hagos, pastor of the Rema Evangelical Church in Asmara, was reportedly arrested on 27 May 2004 while on a visit to Massawa port. It is alleged that these arrests were part of an intensifying wave of government persecution of minority Christian Evangelical and Pentecostal Churches in Eritrea. France 32. On 17 March 2004, the Special Rapporteur transmitted to the Government of France information and allegations concerning the Loi relative à l’application du principe de laïcité dans les écoles, collèges and lycées publics (the so-called Law on Laicity) adopted by the French Parliament and amending the Education Code by inserting an article L. 141-5-1, reading as follows: “In the public primary schools, collèges and high schools, the wearing of signs or clothing by which pupils manifest in a conspicuous manner their religious affiliation is forbidden.” 33. Aside from the numerous criticisms questioning the compatibility of this provision with international law, the Special Rapporteur has received numerous complaints invoking, in particular, the discriminatory character of this law vis-à-vis those persons who call for respect for cultural and religious diversity in general and those professing the Muslim religion in particular. Many of them feel that women’s clothing is more a question of faith than a question of the manifestation of faith. Moreover, there have been incidents involving veiled women who were said to have been verbally attacked or subjected to acts of religious intolerance. 34. The Special Rapporteur drew the attention of the Government to the risks of discrimination to which the new law might lead, as well as to the possible development of tensions and even Islamophobia, and to the possibility that the law might do harm to the principle of cultural and religious diversity itself. 35. By letter dated 1 June 2004, the Government of France replied that while freedom of religion is guaranteed in France, the regime of separation of Church and State provides, on the one hand, that the State makes no judgement as to the religious content of any confession and refuses even to define what is or is not a “religion”; on the other hand, there is in France no system for the registration of religions or for any official recognition to be accorded to any religion. The securing of the status of a “association culturelle”, while not influencing the practice of the denomination, merely confers certain tax advantages. 36. The law cited by the Special Rapporteur is not intended to forbid, in general, any religious symbol connected with a particular faith. The French law does not stigmatize any religion. It does not include a list of prohibited religious symbols. It concerns only the public education system, and even there the prohibition is not systematic: in the public primary schools, collèges and high schools only the 8