Swiss Review 6/2019

Swiss Review / November 2019 / No.6 25 Young people at Zurich Pride in June 2019. The rainbow flag is a colourful symbol of diversity used by the LGBT community. Photo: Keystone must not be criminalised and there is the danger of “per- spective justice”. The Young SVP want to prevent “free- domof expression frombeing restricted even further”. In doing so, the party is basically focusing on the anti-rac- ism provision, whose abolition they are once more call- ing for. Judges place great importance on freedom of expression Twenty-five years before the introduction of the anti-rac- ism provision, opponents focused on freedom of expres- sion during their campaign against the “muzzle law”. In the referendum in autumn 1994, around 55 per cent of voters to the conclusion that the article has been used very spar- ingly to date, and that judges have placed great importance on the argument of freedom of expression in borderline cases. However, statements which belittle human dignity are not borderline cases. Human dignity is at the heart of basic human rights. Accordingly, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzer- land convicted two SVP officials of publishing an adver- tisement with the title “Kosovars slash a Swiss”. During the campaign ahead of a vote on the mass immigration in- itiative the party brought up the case of a criminal of Kosovan origin who attacked a Swiss citizen with a knife in Interlaken. The Federal Tribunal concluded that with the “sweeping judgement” in the advertisement, Kosovars accepted the submission. This cleared the way for Switzer- land to enter the UN Convention as the 130 th state to elim- inate all forms of racial discrimination. The question of whether you “can no longer say everything” has come up time and again since then. Is free- domof expression in Switzerland actually in danger? Judge Vera Leimgruber has analysed the previous legal judge- ments on the anti-racismprovision on behalf of the Federal Committee against Racism (FCR). In the process, she came had been denigrated as an ethnicity and portrayed as be- ing inferior. In doing so, the party had also created a cli- mate of hate. https://jazumschutz.ch https://www.zensurgesetz-nein.ch https://www.ekr.admin.ch