An activist holds a “Black Lives Matter” sign outside the Minneapolis Police Fourth Precinct building following the officer-involved shooting of Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015 (Credit: Wikipedia)
By Gary Raynaldo – DIPLOMATIC TIMES
UNITED NATIONS – NEW YORK – Black people in Switzerland face daily systemic racism including serious racial profiling by the police, according to a United Nations report. It also found policing related to narcotics, including street stops and searches, has disproportionately targeted men of African descent in Switzerland. The report was presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday. The original 59-point documentExternal link drafted by the UN group in January outlined various problems faced by people of African descent in Switzerland, including what it called “shocking reports of police brutality and the expectation of impunity for police misconduct, extending over decades”. People of African descent reported public strip searches and cavity searches conducted with impunity, the study found. Swiss Police forces in their action to fight drug trafficking have largely targeted Black men, especially young people, according to the report.
UN experts said Switzerland must urgently confront Anti-Black racism
“Racial profiling and police controls of Black people humiliate, criminalize and stigmatize,” Dominique Day, head of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, said at the time the January report was released. “According to information received, police operations include brutal arrests, racial profiling, humiliating and degrading treatment, and reinforce negative racial stereotypes in the public realm. These are a violation of human rights.”
Working group president Catherine Namakula told the HRC on Monday that the members of her group were “extremely worried” about attitudes towards policing and justice in Switzerland.
The UN-appointed Working Group spoke with the family of Nzoy Roger Wilhelm, who was killed by police on a train platform in Morges in 2021. It has also followed closely the cases of Mike Ben Peter, Lamin Fatty, Herve Mandundu, Mohammed Wa Baile and Omar Mussa Ali.
“Some of these cases represent the most tragic outcomes of racial profiling. In each case, troubling barriers in the access to justice for the victims and their families persist. Families have been forced to retain expensive counsel and experts, prove “close relationships” in order to pursue claims, and face the systematic invoking of self-defense by the police,” according to the report.
Switzerland Defends Racism Record at UN Rights Council
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland (UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre )
Jürg Lauber, the Swiss Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, sharply refuted the UN report criticizing structural racism in the country, saying it included “misunderstandings” which are “not representative of the situation” in Switzerland. “Numerous general conclusions seem to be based on only one or several individual cases,” he added.
