Lawmakers in Geneva, Switzerland, want to ban Nazi symbols
GENEVA (AFP) – Despite outrage over a large swastika flag hanging at a military memorabilia market this month and the open online trade in Third Reich insignia, it remains perfectly legal to display Nazi symbols in Switzerland.
But at least in Geneva, one of the country’s 26 cantons, there are moves to change things.
A cross-party group of lawmakers in the region proposed amending the canton’s constitution to ban “the display or wearing of Nazi symbols, emblems or other Nazi objects” in public.
The Geneva legislature debated the proposal on Friday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and decided by a vote of 56 to 28 to refer the plan to its human rights commission for closer scrutiny.
“Everyone said they agreed with the text; that it was welcome, necessary and useful,” Green lawmaker Francois Lefort told AFP.
The proposal, if approved by the Geneva Council, would then have to be approved by the federal parliament in Bern and then by a referendum in Geneva.
Illustrative: Nazi memorabilia in a Uruguayan store “Kamuflados en Kombate”. (Youtube screenshot)
Museums and film productions would be exempt from the ban, which would draw Geneva level with much of Europe.
“No place” for National Socialism
“It’s never too late to stop Nazi ideas being expressed through these articles,” Liberal lawmaker Alexis Barbey, who co-signed the proposal, told AFP.
Lefort condemned the “current morbid romance” surrounding Nazism, saying the trade in fascist memorabilia “supports a racist ideology and is dangerous to democracy”.
Thomas Blasi, an MP for the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party who initiated the proposal, said: “It has great symbolic value because politicians from different parties have been trying to ban these Nazi symbols and objects for more than 20 years.”
“Nazism has no place in Europe, no place in Switzerland,” said Blasi, a grandson of Gaston de Bonneval, who served as aide-de-camp to French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle between 1945 and 1964.
Bonneval was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and spent two years in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Around 200,000 prisoners passed through the site, almost half of them lost their lives.
SS officials, including Heinrich Himmler, visit the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1941. (CC-BY-SA-3.0-de , German Federal Archives)
Switzerland, which remained neutral during World War II, is under increasing pressure to join a number of other European countries in banning Nazi symbols.
Total bans are in place in Germany, Poland and several other Eastern European countries.
In France, on the other hand, the exhibition of Nazi objects is forbidden, but their sale is not, albeit rarely tolerated.
“Prevention is no longer enough”
In Switzerland, “wearing and displaying Nazi symbols in public is not prohibited unless accompanied by a message promoting racist or anti-Semitic ideology,” said Johanne Gurfinkiel, general secretary of Cicad, an association that promotes anti-Semitism in France fought -speaking west of Switzerland.
But that fine line has been exploited by neo-Nazi groups and those who deal in Third Reich uniforms and memorabilia, he said.
According to Cicad, the use of symbols related to Nazism or the Holocaust has increased significantly in recent years, particularly during protests against anti-Covid measures.
Faced with this trivialization, a lawmaker urged the national government to act in 2021.
The federal government insisted that “we must accept the expression of disturbing ideas, even if the majority find them shocking”.
Illustratively, a Germany 1934 FIFA World Cup soccer jersey is displayed alongside other national soccer team jerseys at a shopping mall in Salvador, Brazil June 19, 2014. The Nazi eagle and swastika are clearly visible on the front of the shirt. (AP/Bernat Armangue)
However, under mounting pressure, the government finally instructed the Justice Department to assess whether action was needed.
In December it was said that a ban on Nazi symbols was “in principle possible, but the creation of a new standard would encounter considerable legal obstacles”.
Meanwhile, the Swiss Parliament’s Legal Review Committee said on January 12 that it would support a ban.
For the Swiss Federation of Israelite Communities, it is time to act, because “if prevention is no longer sufficient, criminal law must intervene”.
