Keeping
Alps white

Mention chocolate, watches and banks open to any criminal with a fat billfold, and the Swiss immediately spring to mind. But as they head toward October elections, the Swiss People’s Party, the majority seat-holder in the Swiss parliament, has helped earn another descriptor for the nation down the wrong side of the Alps: racist.

Beginning with a pre-election poster campaign in which three white sheep gleefully boot a black sheep off a flag of Switzerland, the SPP has launched a multi-tiered attack on the nation’s foreigners, and the message seems indisputably to be, “Let’s get rid of them.”

The campaign has brought about a request for a government explanation from the UN’s Special Rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène. While the official reply focused on freedom of expression, Dr. Ulrich Schlüer, one of the SPP’s minds behind a proposed law that calls for the deportation of the entire families of foreign-born law-breakers, showed less diplomacy.

“He’s from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own,” Schlüer said of Diène. “I don’t know why he comes here instead of getting on with that.”

by Scott Saxon