Swiss man who compared parliament member to Hitler gets suspended fine
The man implicitly compared a Social Democrat MP to Hitler on Facebook.
Keystone / Bernd Weissbrod
A 50-year-old Zurich man has been given a suspended fine for defamation and slander after he compared Social Democrat parliamentarian Tamara Funiciello to Adolf Hitler on Facebook.
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Швейцарца, сравнившего депутата с Гитлером, оштрафовали условно
He was given a suspended fine of CHF3,750 ($4,370) and ordered to pay CHF800 in legal costs.
The offence occurred last September, the day after a popular vote in which Swiss citizens approved raising the legal retirement age for women from 64 to 65.
MP Funiciello expressed her anger in a Facebook comment, saying that “old white men” were responsible for the result. The Zurich man responded by saying she reminded him of a man who, in the 1930s and 1940s, shouted and talked about fighting. This person was also against part of the population and said he was left-wing, the defendant commented on Facebook.
Funiciello then lodged a complaint. The Zurich public prosecutor found that even if the man did not explicitly mention Hitler’s name, it was clear that he was referring to Hitler. It deemed that nobody has the right to publicly compare a democratically elected politician with an anti-democratic mass murderer.
Online hate speech is a growing problem in Switzerland. A number of initiatives have been set up in recent years to try and tackle the problem, including an online platform for reporting racist hate speech on the Internet.
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