Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern!
It’s Ronaldo mania here in Bern. For all the Bernese football fans out there, tonight is a big deal. The Bernese Young Boys (known as YB to locals) will play Manchester United at the stadium here in Bern. According to local media, fans are camped out in front of Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo’s hotel but it isn’t clear whether he will even play tonight.
In other news, vaccination rates are on the upswing, Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer deals with the fallout from his corona sceptics t-shirt, and Zurich becomes the latest city to launch a recreational cannabis trial.
In the News: Cannabis trials get the greenlight in Zurich and the vaccination drive gets a young upgrade.
- It’s a greenlight for the “Züri Can – Cannabis with Responsibility’ study. Following parliamentary approval of a law change last year, Swiss cities can study the effects of the cannabis market. Today Switzerland’s largest city, Zurich, announced that next year it will allow people to buy cannabis products from pharmacies and social clubs under controlled conditions.
- “Getting vaccinated – Smarter than putting fireworks down your trousers”. That’s the title of the government’s latest vaccine campaign videoExternal link that it hopes will energize youth to get the jab. Instead of the usual medical professionals talking up the reasons to get vaccinated, the government hopes humour will do the trick. Vaccination rates have been rising in the last few days but this is more likely attributed to the Covid certificate than anything else.
- With the Covid certificate required to do just about anything these days, many from abroad are wondering what this means for people who have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, Sputnik and other vaccines not approved by Swiss authorities. A decision on this could come soon as the tourism sector warns that excluding vaccines widely used abroad could keep tourists away.
Deep Dive: What is it like to accompany someone as they choose to die?
This is what my colleagues Kaoru Uda and Ester Unterfinger have done with their portrait of Yoshi – a Japanese man who flew to Switzerland to end his life with the help of the Swiss assisted suicide organisation lifecircle. Yoshi suffered from an incurable, debilitating condition that made it difficult to swallow, walk and complete basic tasks. Even sleeping was painful.
“I could feel that my life was coming to an end”, Yoshi told my colleagues. But assisted suicide is illegal in Japan, leading Yoshi to seek out options in Switzerland. He spent the last hours of his life in Basel with his parents by his side. My colleagues capture in words and pictures Yoshi’s final moments – his last words, his last breath before he passed peacefully.
More than 1,000 seriously ill or disabled people end their lives with the help of suicide assistants in Switzerland each year. Even though assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, it still stirs controversy.
Yoshi is convinced that it is an ethical act to end one’s life when you have an incurable disease. This can save medical resources for other patients, he says. He hopes that one day people suffering with diseases like his will be able to die peacefully at home in Japan.
Swiss public television SRF reported today that the assisted suicide organisation Exit has been debating whether to allow Swiss abroadExternal link to remain members of the organisation. The proposal to ban people from abroad was rejected. In 2020, ten people from abroad used their assisted suicide services in Switzerland.
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Word on the Street: the t-shirt that sparked an uproar
“Freiheitstrychler”. This is the name of a group of people who have staged demos against Covid measures here. Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has faced strong criticismExternal link after a photo was circulated of him wearing a t-shirt with the Freiheitstrychler logo at an event over the weekend.
In an interview on Swiss public television SRF, political expert Michael Hermann said such provocation isn’t unusual for the Federal Councillor who also questioned the use of the CovidApp for contact tracing when it was introduced. He said Maurer wants to show that he sympathises with the movement and is critical of the federal government’s official corona policy.
But as a member of the seven-member executive branch, this sends some mixed messages, which didn’t go unnoticed. According to the Tages-Anzeiger, the Social Democrats have sent a letterExternal link to the SVP telling them that Maurer’s provocation has gone too far. One parliamentarian called it an attack on public health in the country.
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