• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Racist violence in Switzerland

Racist violence in Switzerland

01 January 1991

Racist violence in Switzerland
artdoc July=1992

CARF no 7, March/April 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]

Racist violence in Switzerland is taking on shocking new
proportions, reports a CARF correspondent in St Gailen.

The hate and anger expressed by more and more Swiss people
against asylum-seekers and `guestworkers' is a shocking new
reality. Almost every week physical attacks are being carried
out.

* On 2 July 1989, two Tamil adults and two children were killed
in an arson attack in Chur, for which no one has been brought to
justice.

* In May 1991, racists threw smoke grenades into the hallway of
a hostel in Bulach. A Lebanese was treated in hospital.

* On 19 June, shots were fired from a passing car into a refugee
hostel in Aadorf TG.

* On 19 July,a refugee hostel in Sion VS was set alight and one
person died. Police called it an accident.

* During July, attacks using explosives were made on Freiburg
hostels.

* In August, a house where refugees lived was burned down in
Laupen; another fire in a house close to Geneva airport where 40
asylum-seekers lived was treated by police as arson.

In 1992, there have already been an estimated 35 arson and bomb
attacks against asylum-seekers and other non Swiss nationals, yet
we are constantly being told there is no racial motivation. `Just
drunks having a go' is how the story goes. For there is now an
unholy alliance in Switzerland between violent racists and the
police and politicians who try to play down attacks.

On 25 January, the Asylum Coordination Group and Turkish and
Kurdish migrants demonstrated in Bern after police arrested five
workers on the Turkish paper, "Mucadele", on the grounds that
they had been blackmailing other Turks to raise money for their
socialist paper. The demonstrators protested at these trumped up
charges, which are seen as a way of threatening and trying to
prevent political activity amongst foreigners in Switzerland.