Blocher takes swipe at international law

The People's Party uses provocative posters to spread fear of foreigners swissinfo.ch

Justice Minister Christoph Blocher has again invited criticism after he complained that Swiss democracy had to play second fiddle to international law.

His recent comments come as several people’s initiatives, including one calling for a ban on minarets, are putting the country on a collision course with international human rights treaties.

Speaking on August 1 – Swiss National Day – Blocher took umbrage at international law, saying it was restricting direct democracy, notably people’s initiatives and referendums.

This should hardly have come as a surprise. His party, the rightwing Swiss People’s Party, continues to launch or back initiatives that could, if adopted, contravene the United Nations charter on human rights or the European Convention on Human Rights.

That is already the case with one initiative calling for dangerous criminals to be jailed for life, which parliament is currently unable to transform into law. A similar fate could lie in store for other proposals such as a ban on minarets and the deportation of foreign criminals, which was launched on August 1.

Tougher legislation on foreigners and asylum, which was approved by voters in September last year and came into force on January 1, also ran into trouble.

The UN refugee agency maintains that some of the measures in the revised asylum law run contrary to the “spirit and letter” of the 1951 Geneva refugee convention.

Fear of foreigners

The continued hardening of Swiss legislation reflects fears held by sections of the Swiss public of foreigners and a perceived rise in crime. But this repeated turning of the screw by rightwing politicians is causing concern outside the ranks of the political left.

Heinrich Koller, former director of the justice ministry under Blocher, was very critical of the justice minister’s comments, refusing to mince his words in an interview with Sunday’s NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

“If someone states that international law restricts freedom, then that is a distortion of the truth,” he said.

Koller added that Switzerland existed as a state thanks to human rights, and any justice minister who failed to recognise this “loses credibility as the guardian of the law”.

Claude Ruey, a parliamentarian from the centre-right Liberal party who opposed the new laws on foreigners and asylum, claimed Switzerland still had some of the highest standards for respect of human rights.

But he said there was a widening gap between the strong international commitment by Switzerland in favour of human rights and the ever more restrictive measures adopted or proposed at home against certain minorities.

“We must stay vigilant,” said Ruey. “And as Switzerland is the depositary of the Geneva Conventions and Geneva is the home of the [United Nations] Human Rights Council, we must lead by example.”

Ruey added that events in Switzerland, which prides itself on its humanitarian tradition, had not gone unnoticed by foreign diplomats.

Mounting barricades

Legal experts have also been mounting the barricades, among them Walter Kälin, professor of constitutional and international public law at Bern University.

Kälin does not deny the restrictive nature of international law concerning certain aspects of direct democracy, but he says it is there to act as a safeguard.

“Democracy has its limits. One cannot vote for or against a genocide or the setting up of an apartheid regime,” he said.

Kälin added that there would always be tensions between the will of the majority and the rights and legitimate interests of minorities.

“International law therefore puts limits on the will of the majority,” he said. “But it is there to protect minorities and individuals. That’s to say every one of us.”

swissinfo, Frédéric Burnand in Geneva

In brief

The primacy of international law over Swiss law was accepted in the middle of the 19th century.

Following the adoption by Switzerland of an international treaty that contravened a Swiss law, the Federal Court ruled in favour of the treaty.

Apart from a few exceptions in the 1930s, this principle has only been questioned in a case concerning the Lex Koller, which restricts foreigners from buying land in Switzerland.