Zurich voters reject ban on “suicide tourism”
Voters in Zurich overwhemingly rejected on Sunday proposed bans on assisted suicide and “suicide tourism” — foreigners traveling to Switzerland to receive help ending their lives. Only 15.5 percent of voters in the local referendum backed a ban on assisted suicide, while nearly 22 percent supported a ban on suicide tourism, final results showed. About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich.
Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician who has no vested interest in the death. Euthanasia, or “mercy killing,” is legal only in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the U.S. state of Oregon. Many terminally ill foreigners — particularly from Germany, France and Britain — travel to Switzerland to commit suicide, taking advantage of the Swiss rules which are among the world’s most liberal.
But a rise in the number of foreigners seeking to end their lives in Switzerland, and a study showing that more and more people seeking assisted suicides in the country do not suffer from a terminal illness, have provoked heated debate.
The Swiss Evangelical People’s Party, which had supported the bans, said it regretted the outcome but was pleased it had prompted so much discussion. “We now need to make sure that assisted suicide isn’t just extended without limit and also that suicide tourism with foreigners is critically monitored,” it said in a statement.
The Swiss government has said it is looking to change the law on assisted suicide to make sure it was used only as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit “suicide tourism.”
The right-to-die group Exit has agreed rules to govern assisted suicide with prosecutors in Zurich in the hope they might eventually form the basis of national regulation. Foreigners are not explicitly excluded under the new rules, but a Swiss doctor who prescribes the deadly anesthetic must have met the person twice over a period of time to be sure of their wishes.
Muslim group aims to reverse Swiss minaret ban
A Swiss Islamic group has said it was launching a popular initiative to reverse a ban on building new minarets in the Alpine state, saying voters would decide differently if the matter came up for referendum again. Last year, 57.5 percent of Swiss voters approved a ban on the construction of new minarets, drawing international condemnation. The government had rejected the initiative as violating the constitution.
The plan to reverse the minaret ban comes a day after a majority of Swiss voted to back expulsion of foreigners convicted of serious crimes, the latest sign of growing hostility to immigration.
The text of the proposed initiative will state that the ban on building minarets is to be stricken from the constitution, the Central Islamic Council of Switzerland said on Monday. “Today we can clearly say that accepting the ban has brought neither the voters nor this country any profit,” said Nicolas Blancho, president of the group. “This (new referendum) will also show that we respect democracy and stick to local law.”
The Berne-based Council says it has 1,700 members. In May the Federal Migration Bureau excluded it from an inter-cultural dialogue, saying it first needed to condemn the notion of stoning of women as a punishment.The Swiss-born Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan called him “a marginal figure in the Muslim landscape.” About 350,000 Muslims live in Switzerland, which has a population of 7.7 million.
When asked why voters would decide differently should the question of minarets come up again for referendum, Oscar Bergamin, an advisor to the group, answered: “People today are much better able to differentiate. They’re better informed and have time to become still better informed in coming years.”
Both the expulsion and the minarets initiative were put forward by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which has mined increasing fear about immigration in recent years to become the country’s biggest political movement. Referendums are common in Switzerland and have been held on issues ranging from health insurance to smoking bans.
Europe cited in US religious freedoms report
The United States voiced concern on Wednesday over deteriorating religious freedoms in many parts of the world, including several European countries where “harsh measures” limiting religious expression have been put in place.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the latest State Department report on global religious freedom, which rates countries around the world.
“Religious freedom is both a fundamental human right and an essential element to any stable, peaceful, thriving society,” Clinton told a news conference
The report cited North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, China, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan among the worst offenders, repeating criticisms the United States makes almost every year.
But it also took note of countries such as France and Switzerland where voters and lawmakers have passed laws forbidding Muslim face veils and new mosque minarets.
A review of Christian-Muslim conflict and a modest proposal to counter it
At a Christian-Muslim conference in Geneva this week, participants agreed to build a network for “peace teams” to intervene in crises where religious differences are invoked as the cause of the dispute. The idea is that religious differences may not be the real problem in a so-called religious conflict, but rather a means to mobilise the masses in a dispute that actually stems from political or economic rivalries.
If outside experts could help disentangle religion from the other issues, the argument goes, that could help neutralise religion’s capacity to mobilise and inflame, in the hope of leading to a de-escalation of the crisis.
Is this idealistic? Maybe. However, given the number of crises throughout the world that have religion factored into the equation, it certainly seems worth the effort. Many of these conflicts are not simply battles between religious fanatics, as they may be presented, but calculated agitation by one group against another, usually for political or economic advantage. Some smokescreens are easy to see through, others almost impenetrable.
In his speech to the conference, Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal sketched out the problem facing religious experts who undertake such peace missions. “Before considering what to do and how to do it, we are faced with a series of complex social, political and religious puzzles which we must fully understand in order not to make things worse,” he said.
He then offered a brief tour d’horizon of Christian-Muslim tension and conflict in the world. It’s not complete and readers may disagree on specific points (that’s what the Comments section below is for!), but it’s a useful overview worth posting verbatim to highlight the problems and invite debate on them.
Ghazi said there are:
- “places where Christians are clearly severely oppressed by Muslims (such as Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan), and places where Muslims are clearly severely oppressed by Christians (such as the Philippines);
Is this just another discussion or will the Jordanian Prince Ghazi speak to rulers of Burma, Thailand and India (heads of States)
Arvind Pereira
http://www.ArvindLeoPereira.co.nr
After minarets, will Switzerland ban burqas too?
Full Muslim face veils could become the next divisive religious issue to take centre stage in Switzerland, where voters last November approved a measure banning the construction of new minarets. The Swiss federal government said in February it saw no need for a “burqa ban.” Politicians at the national level say there’s no “burqa problem” in Switzerland. But few thought there was a “minaret problem” either, until the question was put to a national referendum and the minaret ban campaigners won.
Like the minarets, of which there are only four in Switzerland, there are very few veiled women in Switzerland. The most likely place to see them is Geneva, where many rich Middle Easterners do their banking. Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey recently told the newspaper Blick that she’d once seen fully veiled women there and was “furious, because the burqa is a symbol of the enslavement of women.” But she insisted to her interviewers: “I’m against burqas. And I’m against a burqa ban … we don’t have a burqa problem in Switzerland. Very few women wear a burqa here. Have you even seen one?”
Similarly, Economy Minister Doris Leuthard, who is also serving this year as the country’s president, has said “we’ve got much tougher, more important problems.” Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has said “we don’t really have a burqa problem in Switzerland now.” She did add, though, that she was watching to see whether a “parallel society” was developing. “We are not ready to let our legal system and our values be compromised,” she said.
Down at the cantonal level, though, things may be moving. The legislature in the canton of Aargau has voted overwhelmingly to propose a national bill to outlaw full face veils. Two more canton legislatures, in Bern and Solothurn, are reported to be ready to do the same.
Will these initiatives lead to a national ban? It’s too early to say. But the minaret ban idea started at the regional level, too, in Zurich canton, and turned into a national referendum that ended in a surprise. It will be worth watching to see if Switzerland looks likely to follow the example of Belgium and France.
from Global News Journal:
Modern form of bank robbery?
Germany has signalled it is ready to pay a thief who stole secret bank data in Switzerland in order to collect a small fortune in taxes and fines for tax evasion. According to media reports, the data may relate to money held by 1,500 Germans dodging taxes by hiding their money in Swiss bank accounts. But is it right for a state based on the rule of law to pay for stolen data? Is it a question of the ends justifying the means (exitus acta probat)? Or is it simply a modern form of bank robbery, like a Swiss lawmaker called it so colorfully on Tuesday?
It's a question that has caused a stir on both sides of the German-Swiss border. Do two wrongs make a right? Can stolen data be used as evidence in court? Or is acceptable for a state to reward a thief in the pursuit of the greater good of fighting tax evasion -- seen as a more serious crime?
Germans understandably have a deep suspicion about invasion of privacy after their ominous past experience with the Nazi's Gestapo and the East German Stasi security police. And Switzerland has historical hang ups about about Germany. There have been spirited debates on the moral pros and cons of the latest immoral offer for days.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble have said they're in principle willing to pay an informant a reported 2.5 million euros for the bank data from Switzerland that could lead to more than 100 million euros for state coffers. The issue has has dominated newspaper headlines and TV bulletins in both countries for days.
That's all good news for Germany's fiscal health as it has prompted a wave of Germans with money stashed in Switzerland to come clean, as the Berlin newspaper TAZ noted today: "The mere talk about the Swiss tax data will be lucrative for the state. Those who are nervous and turn themselves in can still avoid criminal punishment but will nevertheless have to pay the taxes they've been evading."
Reuters correspondent Albert Schmieder in Zurich talked to a banker today who told him: "The phones are ringing off the hook. A lot of Germans are quaking in their boots." An opinion poll published in Germany on Tuesday found 57 percent of the public in favour of paying the thief to go after the tax dodgers. Spiegel online noted that newspaper editorials in Germany are saying "the days of the numbered Swiss account are, well, numbered."
But the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper warned that the government's readiness to deal with a criminal for stolen bank data in this case as well as a similar case involving Liechtenstein two years years ago had created a new market for "Steuerdatenhandel" -- trading tax data. The Boersen-Zeitung business daily called it a seedy business and compared it to the narcotics trade. "Der Staat als Dealer" (The state as a dealer) it wrote. "The end does not justify the means in a state based upon the rule of law," Boersen-Zeitung wrote.
Just print that info & let the perspective localities handle it.
The person with the info that tries to blackmail someone is liable for extorsion.
This is the same as taking personal stats off of your PC & selling it to the highest bidder.
Kind of like Spam.
Dash
European Muslims face growing discrimination – OSI report
Muslims are facing increased discrimination across Europe and urgent action needs to be taken at local, national and EU levels to tackle the problem, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The Open Society Institute, a private foundation set up by billionaire financier George Soros, said many Muslims suffered unfair treatment along with social and economic disadvantages, despite being integral to the cities in which they lived.
“Europe needs to live up to its promise of an inclusive, open society,” said Nazia Hussain, director of OSI’s At Home in Europe project. “Switzerland’s recent ban on minarets is a clear sign that anti-Muslim sentiment is a real problem in Europe.”
The OSI report, based on more than 2,000 interviews in 11 cities in seven countries — the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Britain, France and Sweden — said Muslims faced higher unemployment, had lower-paid jobs and suffered higher poverty rates. Some Muslim pupils faced racism and prejudice, and were confronted by lower expectations from teachers.
Here’s a link to the full report.
oh my,this story comes as a big surprise. racisim and discrimination in europe? who would have ever thought that would happen?…..please, europe is what it always was and will be in the future.
GUESTVIEW: European liberals – stand up and speak out in Islam debate
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Dr H.A. Hellyer is Fellow of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, author of “Muslims of Europe: the ‘Other’ Europeans”and Director of the Visionary Consultants Group.
By Dr H.A. Hellyer
The real inheritors of European liberalism need to stand up and make themselves known because the struggle to maintain pluralism in Europe is only going to get tougher from here on in.
People will differ as to when they started, and why, and who is to blame. But one thing is for sure. The problems in Europe around the Muslim presence are not going to go away – they are going to intensify. And real European liberals are going to have make their voices be counted, or say farewell to a Europe that fought so hard to ensure civil liberties and freedom could find homes on the continent.
It did not have to be this way, but the tell-tale signs have been there for a very long while. For years now, there have been two main set of trends that have been increasingly worrying, and which now have intersected with each other to produce a scenario that people should have tried to avoid. The first was the movement of the political spectrum towards the far-right. Let’s be clear – it is not that the far-right suddenly became a lot more popular, and a lot of votes were cast in their favour. That, in one respect, would have been more manageable.
The real success of the far-right has been to affect the national agenda itself, and make elements of their own political program more palatable to voters in mainstream political parties all across Europe. We see it in the UK, in how a lot of mainstream political discourse has changed, in order to keep votes away from the far-right like the British National Party (BNP). We see it in France, where mainstream politicians now openly say things in regards to immigration and Muslim minority groups that years ago only far-right politicians would ever utter.
There are many examples across the board and in this regard, mainstream political parties have a lot to answer for. Instead of dealing with the issues that the far-right brought up, which stirred up fears (often baseless, but fears nonetheless) of huge swathes of the local populations, they chose to focus more on their political survival, and allow populism to disproportionately influence national debates on the Muslim presence. And that Muslim presence is now the test Europe must face in order to decide once and for all – is this a continent for all, or are some more equal than others?
It will be great treat to watch two monolithic religions trying to establish superiority sooner or later… Jesus is the only way vs Allah is the only way… Further it would be interesting to watch as a mullah tries to impose sharia on Muslims, which would clash directly with laws of land… This at later stage might result in Church imposing biblical laws on Christians… Three parallel government governing citizens… Extremely interesting development and a great event to unfold in future. Muslims of course will get support from Arab and Islamic nations who will try to further their religious agenda in Europe. I think the liberals or those who value freedom of thought and freedom of individual will come flocking to place like China, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Combodia etc the only civilizations standing and guaranteeing full freedom.
Swiss minaret ban reversal vote in pipeline
Swiss liberals are considering a new referendum to overturn the ban on building new minarets in the country, Sunday papers reported, as Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi warned the ban played into the hands of terrorists.
Club Helvetique, a group of over 20 Swiss intellectuals, will draw up an action plan to overturn the ban, which has drawn widespread criticism abroad and prompted hundreds of people to take to the streets this weekend in Zurich, Basel and Berne.
“A new initiative is the most democratic way of achieving this,” constitutional lawyer Jörg Müller told Sonntag.
Voters adopted the ban in a referendum a week ago, defying the government and parliament which had warned the right-wing initiative violated the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and a cherished tradition of tolerance.
Two complaints questioning the legality of ban had already been handed to Switzerland’s Federal Court, Sonntag said.
Swiss politician apologises over cemetery ban call
The leader of Switzerland’s centrist Christian Democrats (CVP) has apologised for calling for a ban on new Muslim and Jewish cemeteries, just days after Swiss voters approved a halt to building minarets.
“I am sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” CVP leader Christophe Darbellay told the tabloid Blick daily on Friday, adding: “It was about the principle that we all belong to the same Swiss society … but you can’t explain that in 15 seconds.”
Darbellay provoked protests when he told local television earlier in the week that Switzerland should not allow the building of separate cemeteries for Jews or Muslims in future.
The Conference of European Rabbis criticised his comments on Thursday and said the Swiss minaret ban will fuel xenophobia and risks making Jews the next target of religious intolerance. “We don’t have a situation of the extreme right in Europe attacking Jews because they are content to attack Muslims,” Philip Carmel, the international relations director for the Conference of European Rabbis, told Reuters.
“But the Swiss example is classic: it’s not just Muslims who are going to be targeted by the extreme right.”
Darbellay has also proposed a ban on the Muslim burqa, or face veil. His comments are seen as a response to the rise of the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) which campaigned for the minaret ban.
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