Right-wing and republican lawmakers walked out of a meeting in France’s parliament on Thursday due to the presence of a woman wearing the Hijab.

Maryam Pougetoux, the spokesperson of the National Union of Students in France, was attending a parliamentary inquiry examining the effects of Covid-19 on children when Anne-Christine Lang declared she was leaving the proceedings.

“I cannot accept that in the centre of the National Assembly, the beating heart of democracy… that we accept that a person appears in a Hijab before a parliamentary inquiry committee,” she declared in a video she later posted on her Twitter page.

Lang argued on Twitter that she could not digest the presence of a person with a headscarf at a meeting held at the national assembly, “the heart of democracy.”

“As a member of parliament who is a feminist and protector of women’s rights, committed to republican values and secularism, I cannot accept the participation of a person wearing a headscarf to our meeting,” she said.