Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

Today’s briefing brings news of peace talks in Geneva for Sudan, a rather lucky lightning strike and a woman who has lived in the same village for 100 years.

Best wishes from Bern.

Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

Sudan peace talks in Geneva, but without the country’s army

Talks about how to reach a ceasefire in Sudan should have started today in Geneva. But up to the last minute it wasn’t clear whether both parties would take part in the diplomatic efforts, as my colleague Dorian Burkhalter writes.

This afternoon it became clear. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) travelled to Switzerland together with delegations from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as representatives of the African Union and the United Nations. The Sudanese army, however, did not attend the meeting, the Keystone-SDA news agency reports. The talks in Geneva were organised by the US, with backing from Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Earlier rounds of negotiations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, were unsuccessful. Washington cites humanitarian reasons for its involvement.

The civil war in Sudan is considered one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises. The army and the RSF want to seize control of the country along with its wealth. In the last 16 months, 11 million people have been internally displaced.

• Our explainer: everything you need to know about the Geneva peace talks
• The army’s no-show on Wednesday: Keystone-SDA news (in German)

Keystone / Anthony Anex

Petitioning the Russian embassy in Bern: costly idea

How many people does a gathering need to become a “rally”? In Bern’s embassy district, it only takes a few. In March 2022, Lisa Salza wanted to hand over a previously registered petition for peace in Ukraine with 15,000 signatures to the Russian embassy.

But she didn’t get that far. Her group was prevented from handing in the petition at the entrance by security from the Bern police, according to the Berner Zeitung newspaper. Salza, who is a campaign manager at the NGO Amnesty International, was later fined CHF300 ($347) for her troubles. She is now appealing this in court. Salza is not only concerned about her campaign. She fears that an “arbitrary and disproportionate approach” the city authorities could deter people from exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Two years ago, the city of Bern also fined two people who held a sign in front of the UK embassy demanding the release of Julian Assange. As only organisers of a demonstration can be fined, the two were declared co-organisers. The man appealed the fine and was acquitted.

And also two years ago, the city’s security department told the Berner Zeitung that only allowing delegations of a few people in front of foreign embassies had proved to be a good idea.

• A CHF300 fine for a “rally”; article in the Berner ZeitungExternal link (for paid subscribers)
• Another Berner Zeitung articleExternal link about fines in the embassy district

Keystone / Michael Buholzer

Surviving a lightning strike: the cautionary tale of a Swiss golfer

In Switzerland, 48,000 lightning strikes were recorded during storms on Monday evening. The chance of being struck by lightning in the country is one in one million – but Gianluca Biggi is one of these rare unlucky ones.

It happened on a golf course. Caught out in a storm a long with a friend, Biggi sought shelter in a covered dugout. But without success: lightning struck a tree and then Biggi’s head. His friend reported “an incredible heat, hotter than a blast of air from an oven”; the shock wave flung him a few metres away. He then managed to resuscitate Biggi, whose hair was burnt, until emergency services arrived.

Biggi himself has no memory of the strike; after falling into a coma, he only regained consciousness in hospital. Four out of five people do not recover properly from a lightning strike; Biggi was one of the lucky ones. “I had no internal burns,” he said in an interview with Swiss public broadcaster, SRF. He has since recovered and is working again as a financial analyst. However, his memory has suffered, and he is more forgetful, he says.

• Read the SRF interviewExternal link with Biggi (article in German)
• A meteorologist tells the Tages-AnzeigerExternal link about the “mortal danger” of storms (article in German)

SRF

A Swiss woman who has lived in the same village for a century

How many times have you moved in your life? How many flats and towns have you lived in? Marie Vogler-Gasser has lived her whole life – 100 years – in the municipality of Lungern, in canton Obwalden (central Switzerland). During this time, she has lived in her parents’ house, then with her family in a house and now in a retirement home – three moves in 100 years.

Vogler-Gasser (pictured above in 1989) is a valuable contemporary witness of passing time, SRF reports. She has witnessed how the municipality has changed over a century, how tourism in the region experienced an upturn and later a downturn again. The village has become very quiet, says the pensioner.

She seems happy with her life in Lungern, where the community has “always been everything” for her, she says. And it’s not as if she has never left the village. Her sister emigrated to the USA, where Vogler-Gasser later visited her. She can understand why Lungern became too small for her sister, she says. However, “a life [in the USA] would have been nothing” for her.

• A century in Lungern: read the SRF article here (article in German)
• Most people aged 100 or over live in the canton of Ticino, writes the NZZExternal link (article in German)

Translated from German by DeepL/dos