Switzerland
A Swiss right-wing magazine Weltwoche, published a photograph of a gun-wielding Roma child on its cover in 2012 with the title “The Roma are coming: Plundering in Switzerland”. They claimed in a series of articles of a growing trend in the country of “criminal tourism for which eastern European Roma clans are responsible” with professional gangs specializing in burglary, thefts, organized begging and street prostitution. The magazine immediately came under criticism with its links to the right-wing populist People’s Party (SVP), as being deliberately provocative and encouraged racist stereotyping by linking ethnic origin and criminality. Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism is considering legal action after complaints in Switzerland, Austria and Germany that the cover breached anti-racism laws.
The Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel investigated the origins of the photograph taken in the slums of Gjakova, Kosovo, where Roma communities were displaced during the Kosovo War to hovels built on a toxic landfill. The Italian photographer Livio Mancini, denounced the abuse of his photograph which was originally taken to demonstrate the plight of Roma families in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Antiziganism, Contemporary Antiziganism, Europe (non EU)
Famous quotes containing the word switzerland:
“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)