Category Archives: Switzerland

The SVP demands tougher measures against delinquent asylum seekers.

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Translated by Michael Laudahn:

The SVP demands tougher measures against delinquent asylum seekers. These are to be locked up in detention centres. Toni Brunner [SVP president] rejects criticsm expressed by human-rights activists. 

 

From www.20mins.Ch

The SVP demands tougher measures against delinquent asylum seekers. These are to be locked up in detention centres. Toni Brunner [SVP president] rejects criticsm expressed by human-rights activists. 

these are already a fact elsewhere

A ‘light’ detention centre is not sufficient for Brunner: ‘In Switzerland we permit to be walked all over and don’t realise that elsewhere such detention centres are already a fact.’

The SVP wants to lock up delinquent asylum seekers in a national detention centre. About two weeks ahead of the asylum-law debate in the federal parliament, the SVP president made it clear that his party wants to achieve this solution. 

‘The [swiss] federation must establish and finance a central, secure collecting point’, Brunner said in an interview with ‘Zentralschweiz am Sonntag’. This detention centre is supposed to be the destination for those asylum seekers who don’t respect the laws: ‘Starting with drug dealing, via bodily attacks, to burglary.

The SVP president assumes that several hundred persons will have to be accomodated in the camp. In case of emergency, a second camp will be needed. 

The SVP’s proposal will be discussed in parliament probably on 13 june. Then, the asylum law revision is on the agenda. Likewise, the parliament’s national-political commission [Staatspolitische Kommission, SPK] wants to accomodate unruly and delinquent asylum seekers in separate centres.  

A majority of the commission pleaded for a corresponding supplement to the asylum law. The SPK, however, does not want to lock up the asylum seekers, but assign them a radius around the centres. 

No ‘light’ detention centre

Toni Brunner considers this proposal insufficient. ‘Light detention centres’ are not sufficient for the SVP, says he. There must be a fence around the centre: ‘The important thing is that those having lost their chance for asylum in Switzerland no longer can enter and leave at discretion.’

Concerns expressed by human-rights activists are not being shared by Brunner: ‘In Switzerland we permit to be walked all over and don’t realise that elsewhere such detention centres are already a fact.’ Fx Greece disposes of such institutions, and Holland has an asylum procedure in locked centres. 

For the improvement of the asylum system, also justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga [leftist] gets her bearings from Holland, as she said last september: New centres are necessary where procedures can be combined locally and timewise. But these centres are not detention centres, emphasised the justice minister at that time. 

EKR president contradicts Brunner

Also Martine Brunschwig Graf, president of the Eidgenössische Kommission gegen Rassismus (EKR) [federal commission against racism – would you have believed such a thing exists in Switzerland!?] rejects detention centres for asylum seekers. ‘A detention centre won’t lead to anything’, told the Geneva ex-MP (FDP [centrist party]) the NZZ am Sonntag during an interview. According to her it is much more important to accelerate the asylum procedure and swiftly return to their home countries those asylum seekers rejected. 

Brunschwig Graf refuses also the proposal to generally give asylum seekers only emergency aid [nothilfe], instead of social welfare [nothilfe: financial and material aid for rejected asylum seekers, who are not eligible for social welfare]: ‘This would be counter-productive: Through social welfare, also job programmes are implemented, in a way that asyum seekers are being occupied.’

Last week, the Bundesamt [federal office] für Migration had publised a short expertise assessing general emergency aid for asylum seekers as legally justifiable. In the framework of the asylum law debate, parliament will also decide on the FDP proposal. An SPK majority refuses it. 

Controversial emergency aid

For SVP president Brunner, the abolition of social welfare for asylum seekers is necessary in order to make Switzerland as unattractive as possible as an asylum destination, as he said. ‘Emergency aid sounds worse than it is’, he countered criticism expressed by Brunschwig Graf and the left wing.

Next to the abolition of social welfare for asylum seekers, the SVP will also go in for additional tightenings in the asylum system. Part of this will be the limitation of the ‘refugee’ term. 

‘Not only need we be tougher all over the place. We also need to limit appeal options, create more incentives to shorten the asylum procedure, and finally enforce the law already in existence’, demanded Brunner.

Switzerland: ‘No more emergency aid for north africans’

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Articles provided by, and translated by, Michael Laudahn:

20min.Ch:

In order to reduce the number of asylum requests, the President der Konferenz der kantonalen Justiz- und Polizeidirektoren [president of the cantons’ justice and police directors, KKJPD] demands strict measures. He particularly aims at those from the Islamic Maghreb.

Hans-Jürg Käser

– According to Hans-Jürg Käser, many young maghrebis arrive without any asylum grounds: ‘They must no longer receive anything from Switzerland, we need to get rid of them as soon as possible.’

For Hans-Jürg Käser, Präsident der Konferenz der kantonalen Justiz- und Polizeidirektoren (KKJPD), the rise in asylum demands is no longer manageable. As a countermeasure, the FDP [party in the middle of the spectrum] member of the Bern government proposes a strict application of the laws on asylum and foreigners.  

The asylum procedures need to be accelerated drastically, demands Käser in an interview with the friday edition of the western swiss [= francophone Switzerland] newspaper ‘Le Temps’. Ideally, three quarters of the demands ought to be treated within one month, compared to 1000 days today. Moreover, the options for appeal need to be limited, because 85 % of those rejected use them. 

Holland – a model

‘We need to do everything to stop Switzerland from being Europe’s most attractive country with regard to asylum’, says the KKJPD president in his interview. He even thinks out loud about a possible stop of the emergency aid [= financial and material aid which rejected asylum seekers are entitled to, instead of the more comprehensive welfare]. 

Käser called Holland a model, where 70 % of all asylum demands were dealt with within 8 days, and where the major asylum centre, Ter Apel, is closed off and disposes of a prison for 400 persons. 

In the interview, the KKJPD president also mentioned the ‘arab spring’: Many young maghrebis would come to Switzerland without any asylum grounds, moreover crime would be growing. ‘They must no longer receive anything from Switzerland, we need to get rid of them as soon as possible.’


 

‘We demonstrate our presence’ / Vigilante group watching asylum seekers

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Of course, what we see here is 100% predictable when a government stops representing the people of the area and start representing an ideology which no one wanted. The only reason it is not much more wide spread, is that law enforcement tends to be much more aggressive with competing agencies than they are with actual threats to the public safety and property.

Eeyore

Translation by Michael Laudahn with thanks

In two St Gallen [swiss canton] townships, a group of annoyed citizens follows every step asylum seekers take. Now the authorities react.

Hans Thoma at the vigilante group's foundation meeting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Sexual harassment, vandalism, noise and drug dealing are almost a daily routine’, laments Hans Thoma about asylum seekers of the Landegg asylum centre at Eggersriet SG [St Gallen] in ‘Reporter’, SF [swiss state tv] programme. That is why he has formed a kind of vigilante group, together with a neighbouring village. ‘We demonstrate our presence, we document through photos the asylum seekers’ incorrect behaviour, and we report it to police’, according to Thoma.

Now, the canton has reacted: On monday, Jürg Wernli, director of the Appenzell-Ausserrhoden [canton next to St Gallen, both with interlaced borders] Interior and Cultural Department, announced first measures – more positions at the asylum centre, additional busses for asylum seekers and security services at train stations. These and more measures are to be implemented, in the interest of the neighbours of the asylum centre – despite the ‘palpable additional costs for the canton’, according to Wernli. Thoma considers this a ‘success of our engagement’.

However, Stella Jegher at Amnesty International warns: ‘Such action like the one shown by the Thoma group could tilt towards discrimination, even racism, if this leads to a kind of prejudgement of certain groups.’

Dangerous vigilante justice

Members of the ‘Informationsrunde Wienacht-Tobel/Schwendi bei [near] Heiden’ follow asylum seekers living in Wienacht AR [Appenzell-Ausserrhoden canton] (see text). This is not the only kind of a vigilante group in Switzerland: According to the ‘Zürcher Oberländer’ [paper], in the Zurich Oberland a patrol service intervenes against burglars. In Geneva, inhabitants chased tricky conmen, of which violent conflicts resulted. That is why Beat Flach, jurist and national GLP [Green-Liberal Party] MoP warns of vigilante justice: ‘Simply ‘demonstrating presence’ is at the legal borderline, the danger for escalation is great.’

 

Switzerland celebrating some cultural enrichment

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The following news video from Swiss TV describes the increase in violent crime that has accompanied a large increase in the number of asylum-seekers in Switzerland. Predatory criminal gangs of North African origins — some armed with bazookas — have become part of the landscape in some cantons.

For more on this, please visit this story at Gates of Vienna:

Original translation: Muslims in France (Dijons) attacking Swiss businesses.

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Thank you Michael Laudahn for the transaltion

http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/kriminaltouristen-werden-gewalttaetiger_1.17055820.html :

Tourists in crime getting more and more violent

French gangs armed with bazookas raiding banks in Switzerland

A border guard helicopter preparing for a surveillance flight

The swiss border guard is arming against heavily armed gangs from the french banlieues. These gangs stem mostly from the Lyon banlieue; their members are mostly french nationals of north-african origin. Until now, they have committed their raids mostly in western Switzerland [that is the german swiss term for the country’s francophone zone] and in the Ticino [Switzerland’s italophone zone].

Jürg Noth, chief of the Schweizerisches Grenzwachtkorps (GWK) [Swiss Border Guard Corps], warns against french tourists in crime raiding banks, clock manufacturers and clock museums in Switzerland. ‘The perpetrators procede each time more violently and inconsiderately’, says he in an interview with ‘NZZ am Sonntag’ [sunday edition of this newspaper – NZZ, or Neue Zürcher Zeitung]. ‘They are armed with assault rifles, submachine guns and even bazookas, and they even use them.’

These gangs stem usually from the banlieues of Lyon; their members are mostly french nationals of north-african origin. Until now, they have carried out their raids mostly in western Switzerland and the Ticino. But now they expand their activities towards north-western Switzerland [meaning: the german-language area towards Basel], continues to say Jürg Noth. ‘Severe raids have augmented in recent months.’ [*)]

Because of growing cross-border crime, the border guard corps now takes new measures: Its staff is being trained especially against the violent gangs, plus assigns additional border guards in western Switzerland and the Ticino. Also, new protective vests, new road blocks and additional video cameras will be purchased. Finally, helicopters and drones will be used more extensively against these tourists in crime [**)]. This way, the GWK could arrest three perpetrators early in may, after having prosecuted them by helicopter into France.

Crime tourism to Switzerland has grown in recent years. In 2009, around 11 300 foreigners not having a permit of sojourn or residence for Switzerland were accused of crimes. In 2101, this figure climbed to 11 900, last year to 12 800. Most perpetrators come from France and Romania. From Romania we usually get so-called skimming gangs; skimming is fraud committed with falsified ATM or credit cards. Also these have grown in recent times; the border guard corps catch at least one such skimming gang per week.’

Note from translator:

This appears to be only the first time that the swiss public is informed about it.

 

So far, they have used this ‘stasi’ manner mostly against unorthodox swiss citizens and similar people from related nations.

Switzerland Imam: “If the man needs sex, he is allowed to beat his wife”

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Translation by Hermes of this article::

Muslim from Basel has the right to say such thing openly, court of justice ruled.

Aziz Osmanoglu, 36, the secretary of the muslim community in Basel lives abiding strongly by the Koran. “I stand for it entirely. I regret nothing of what I’ve said at that time”.

He is standing trial again.

In the documentary from the SF1 channel called “behind the veil”, Aziz Osmanoglu was one of the chief characters. There he explained to the viewers:

“A (muslim) man needs sex, that’s why in extreme cases he is allowed to beat his wife if she refuses. If not, then the man would look for another partner, and this is not acceptable in Islam”

He finds whipping or cutting off hands a proper punishment for thieves. “I would willingly stand  for Sharia”, he said in addition to it in an interview. What does he have the guts for? Many from the audience shook their heads.

The reaction from the public prosecutor’s office:

Osmanoglu was denounced for “public instigation to crime and violence”. The muslim was at first instance released by the court.

But the issue went ahead in the court of appeal.

During yesterday’s trial, the judge stated that

“the declarations of the accused are clear instigations to violence. And as the secretary of a muslim organization, he has a great capability to influence others”

Osmanoglu denied the charges. He wanted to dismount the preconceptions against the muslims and not to call for violence. People have picked out the statements from the whole context of the documentary, and that he did nothing unlawful.

The president of the court, Claudius Gelzer, judged the aclarations of Osmanoglu as censurable:

“violence against women is strongly condemnable, these declarations are neither morally nor ethically right.

In spite of this, Osmanoglu was once again released because he did not call on directly to behave like that.

Sharia lives. Among us. How does one say it? Be welcome?



 

Muslim girls must swim with boys: Swiss court

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The local:

Photo credit: Nina Matthews (File)

Muslim girls must swim with boys: Swiss court

Published: 27 Mar 2012 10:43 GMT+1
Updated: 27 Mar 2012 09:15 GMT+1

 

A Muslim family in Basel has been fined 1,400 francs ($1,550) for refusing to let its daughters participate in mixed swimming classes.

 

The family had sought to avoid paying the fine on the grounds that the requirement for the girls to join the swimming lesson infringed on their religious freedom, online news website Le Matin reported.

The parents argued that, in accordance with the teachings of the Koran, they wanted to instil a sense of shame in their children before they reached puberty. Mixed swimming lessons in primary school, the family claimed, would be incompatible with such an aim.

click to continue:

Controversial Muslim “Parliament” Planned In Switzerland

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World Crunch:

 

By way of SIOTW

A group of Swiss Muslim organizations are hoping to set up a national parliament of sorts. The Umma Schweiz, as the representative body would be called, could be up and running by 2013. But not all of Switzerland’s 400,000 Muslims are convinced it’s a good idea.

A mosque in Olten, Switzerland (wikipedia) A mosque in Olten, Switzerland (wikipedia)


*NEWSBITES          

TAGES-ANZEIGER/Worldcrunch

ZURICH – Some of Switzerland’s leading Islamic organizations want to set up a single national body that will allow the country’s approximately 400,000 Muslims to “speak with one voice,” as community leader Farhad Afshar puts it. But the proposal has raised eyebrows, as much as anything for the term used to describe it: a “Parliament.”

Afshar, a Bern-based sociologist and president of a Muslim umbrella group called KIOS, is one of several organization heads involved in setting up the “Umma Schweiz,” as the body is to be called. The Arabic word ummah refers to a Muslim community or the Muslim world.

Click to Continue:

Radical Muslim group to launch TV station

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Nicolas Blancho
Photo credit: ICCS

The Local Ch.

Published: 23 Jan 2012 12:11 GMT+1
Updated: 23 Jan 2012 10:32 GMT+1

The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) has announced plans to set up an internet TV channel, while it is also in talks with various companies to provide its members with a Swiss-Muslim discount card.

 

The new TV studios, due to become operational this summer, will play host to a political show, a weekly series on a range of topics seen from a Muslim perspective, and a sermon series, newspaper SonntagsZeitung reports. Sermons are to be given mainly in German, but also in Arabic, Bosnian and Albanian. German subtitles will also be available.

The ICCS is also working towards providing its members with a card that will give discounts of up to 15 percent at a variety of outlets including fitness centres, restaurants and shops.

Health insurance fund Helsana has also confirmed that it is in talks with the organization to give discounts to ICCS members. ICCS president, Nicolas Blancho, is expecting Helsana to give a reduction of 10 percent on insurance premiums, Tages Anzeriger reported on Sunday.

The ICCS is considered by many experts to be a fundamentalist organization, but according to the Tages Anzeiger there is discontent brewing among its members over the leadership style. Blancho in particular is facing criticism for not practising what he preaches.

Council members who do not positively endorse new articles appearing on social media sites such as Facebook would face disciplinary action if they fail to click “like” within 24 hours of the article being posted by the ICCS, Sonntags Zeitung reported.

Please click to continue

SWISS BASED PARLIAMENTARY FORUM INVITES HAMAS TO ATTEND, ISRAEL DENOUNCES THE MOVE

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If the prerequisite for participation in the parliamentary forum is the throwing of the political opposition from roofs of very tall buildings, then Hamas has every right to attend. KGS

Israel fury as Hamas attends global parliamentary forum

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday slammed the decision of the Swiss-based Inter-Parliamentary Union to invite the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to attend its 2012 session. “This is just another example of international hypocrisy,” Lieberman told Israeli public radio. “In all international organisations, the 57 Muslim countries and the many non-aligned nations have the majority and consistently take anti-Israel positions,” he charged.

A three-member delegation of MPs from Hamas’s Change and Reform party left Gaza on Thursday for the meeting in Geneva, marking the first time parliamentarians from the Islamist movement will attend a session of the IPU.

More here.

Detouring Around Democracy

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Up until recently Switzerland was a bastion of direct democracy in Europe, with its established institution of referendums providing the means for its citizens to initiate or approve all significant changes of law at the federal level.

Times have changed, however, and the Swiss have lost much of their sovereignty to the European Union — without their consent. The following guest-essay fromKitman details the latest revelations showing how democracy was stolen from Switzerland.

Echoes from the Minarets: The Discreet Evasion of Swiss Democracy

by Kitman

The “anti-minaret initiative” and the “initiative for deportation of criminal foreigners” served as clear reminders to the Swiss establishment that manipulation of the mass media had become an insufficient tool for controlling public opinion. It was therefore not overly surprising when a first step towards the assignment of new powers to the Swiss federal court was approved by the national assembly a few weeks ago. By allowing the federal court to “test the constitutionality” of federal laws, center-left politicians obviously hope the courts can save them from future unpleasantness. Luzi Stamm from the Swiss People’s Party rightly condemned the suggested changes as a clear “step towards the abolition of direct democracy”, whereas the Green party socialists, thrilled by the taste of judicial supremacy, exclaimed “Switzerland IS the constitution!”

Interestingly, WeltWoche revealed yesterday that the very same federal court, along with recently-departed Foreign Minister Calmy-Rey and Integration Minister Johann Schneider-Amman, have been engaged in a sinister plot to surrender Swiss sovereignty to EU courts without having to ask or tell the Swiss people about it.

Confronted with the difficult task of submitting to EU demands without anybody noticing, the federal court, in cooperation with Daniel Thürer (Swiss delegate of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance [ECRI]), developed the legal equivocations needed to make an actual referendum “unnecessary”. Among other things, the Federal court came up with following gem for insertion into the legal treaty:

“Swiss courts duly take the EU adjudication into account”.

Because the courts have already been doing this for years, that phrase, if inserted correctly, would “strengthen an interpretative mechanism” which according to the federal court would imply that “only given an imperative reason may Swiss courts deviate from EU rulings”. As seen below, Daniel Thürer went somewhat further in his arbitration, suggesting whole new EU agencies inside Switzerland with so-called “powers of co-determination” with the said federal court.

An excerpt from WeltWoche:

Discrete Evasion

[T]he demands from Brussels go far beyond a modification of the bilateral agreement; in fact, they imply the annulment of the agreement. Today both parties to the agreement guard and implement it independently. And disagreements are cleared in mixed committees. However, with the “institutional link-up” demanded from Brussels, the central legal monitoring apparatus of the EU becomes sole interpreter of contracts and their implementation. Foreign judges would thus preside over the legality of [Swiss] measures for controlling migration. And since the European judges in their verdicts notoriously support free [international] contracting over all protective measures, this should cause alarm among trade unionists. The long-term consequences to all contracting are at this time not even possible to estimate.

The Swiss “silver bullet” of bilateral agreements has come to a dead end. In spite of this the Swiss Federal Council are determined to push on, and have thus begun to move the scenery around, in an attempt to disguise the fact that they have deviated from this path and embarked on a different course for EU accession. As former Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey once put it: “We are working on creative solutions.”

However, in these serious matters the creativity does not involve originality or ministerial brilliance. They concern the best way to deceive the people about the true extent of their lost sovereignty.

The preparations were made in an “arbitration” of the Europhile expert in constitutional law Daniel Thürer, professor emeritus Zürich University, along with an “advisory opinion” of the Swiss federal court. The Federal Council has refused to publish both of these papers in an attempt to conceal what they have been hiding all along. In order to ensure public access to this informationWeltwoche has made the documents available for internet download (links at the end of this report).

Daniel Thürer advised against a direct submission to the EU courts, because this would require a referendum, which currently “is sure to have a negative outcome”. He therefore proposes three ways to coat the capitulation and stamp out democracy:

For the rest please click here. This link takes you to Gates of Vienna

Pigs, mosques and the rules of magic.

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I wish I could remember all the times that the issue of stopping mosque construction has been discussed just to have someone or other interject that all that needs doing is burying parts of pigs or pig products and the ground has been desecrated and no mosque can be built there.

My position has always been that this must be patent nonsense. For one thing, one should never use the rules of the enemy when fighting them. Especially when they make those rules up as they go along. I mean surely if they can make up a rule, assuming of course that one such rule actually exists in the first place, they can make up a fix for it. Think of any video game that uses magic. ‘Your spell stops me from building a castle but my magic shield blocks your spell’ sort of thing. If these people believe in ‘Allah’ and Djinn and demons and devils and all sorts of magic and superstition then surely they can mumble a few words over the pig-soaked soil and start pouring a foundation.

That is of course, if any of that is even necessary at all. My guess would be they would just charge the guy with a hate crime and a health code infraction and build the damn thing.

Then an interesting thing happened. I saw a story about a proposed mosque in Switzerland where a person-or-persons-unknown went to town on the lot with 4 pig heads, a pig and I think, some pig blood as well. Clearly someone ate the gelatin on the idea that you could stop a mosque that way. One would imagine that the fact that they bought the land under false pretenses alone would be enough, but it seems someone wanted to go the ‘magic’ route instead and throw the old pig-skin around instead. (Which begs the question. Can Muslims play football?) I mean lets face it. If this works, then we could deal with Iran using the cheapest military campaign in human history. Overfly the holy city of Qom with a Hercules transport carrier filled with bacon bits and drop it like pink snow. That’l learn em.

On the other hand…

there is this:

It would appear that this was done in 2006 and the mosque was never built. Now of course, correlation is not causation. The owner may not have the money, there could be zoning issues, there could be any number of reasons why this mosque still has not been built. But it hasn’t.

Now we have this:

It will be most interesting to watch and see if this has any effect at all. I have my doubts personally. But it will be interesting to see.

Here is the same video as above but with German titles.

This I do know. If you really do want to stop a mosque, and are ready to do the work, talk to this guy.

Swiss back tighter asylum rules

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CANADA: Please take notes! This is fantastic!

From the BBC:

Illegal immigrants queuing

Asylum seekers will be expected to produce ID within 48 hours

Voters in Switzerland have backed tougher laws on asylum-seekers.

In a national referendum, some 67.8% of voters supported the new measures, which the government says are needed to combat abuse of the asylum system.

The new laws cut welfare payments to those whose applications are rejected, and restrict applications from those unable to produce identity documents.

The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, described the referendum result as regrettable.

The vote gives Switzerland some of the strictest asylum and immigration laws in Europe.

Justice Minister Christoph Blocher says they will prevent abuse while protecting real refugees.

Ahead of the vote, he said the aim of the reforms was “to uphold Switzerland’s humanitarian tradition while at the same time halting abuses”. Continue Reading →

Swiss party heading for victory wants to ban immigration

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The Australian

Swiss vote

A far-right Swiss People’s Party poster bears the slogan “That’s enough. Stop mass immigration!”. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

A FAR-right party heading for a record margin of victory in general elections on Sunday has announced plans to turn Switzerland into an immigrant-free bastion.

Polls show that the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is likely to seal its place as Europe’s most successful populist political force after a campaign targeting immigrants, whom its posters depict as black boots trampling on the Swiss flag.

As the election campaign drew to a close, the SVP announced that it had gathered the requisite 100,000 signatures to call a referendum, under Swiss direct democracy laws, on withdrawing from freedom of travel arrangements with the European Union.

This would mean a return to quotas of migrants from the EU, including Britain, limiting access to the Alpine state and reversing a decade of openness.

European companies would have to go through bureaucratic application procedures for their non-Swiss employees and EU visitors would lose the automatic right to stay there.