Switzerland has banned facial coverings following a narrow victory in a binding referendum instigated by the same group that organized a 2009 ban on new minarets on mosques.

The policy, which will see the Swiss constitution amended, passed with 51.2 percent voting for the ban, provisional results showed.

The measure does not reference Islam directly, and also says the measure is aimed at stopping street protesters from wearing masks. However, campaign posters showed it is directed at those who wear forms of the niqab, and local politicians and media have dubbed it the burqa ban.

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Switzerland vote on face-covering ban

"In Switzerland, our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms," said Walter Wobmann, chairman of the referendum committee and a parliamentary representative of the right-populist Swiss People's Party, before the vote.

He described facial coverings as "a symbol for this extreme, political Islam which has become increasingly prominent in Europe and which has no place in Switzerland."

Switzerland's Central Council of Muslims called the vote a dark day for the community.

"Today's decision opens old wounds, further expands the principle of legal inequality, and sends a clear signal of exclusion to the Muslim minority," it said.

The group has pledged to make a legal challenge and raise money to help women who are fined. 

The proposal predates the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen all adults forced to don masks in many settings to prevent the spread of infection. It gathered the necessary support to trigger a referendum in 2017. Two of Switzerland's cantons have already banned face coverings in their regions.

France, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Bulgaria all have full or partial bans on wearing face coverings in public.

Muslims account for 5 percent of the Swiss population. Most of them have roots in Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo. 

The government had advised people to vote against the ban, offering instead to make it a legal requirement to remove face coverings if requested by authorities such as the police and border guards.