Cluster: Swiss Identity

HIV sufferers learn why it’s good to talk

This content was published on Nov 30, 2012 On the floor of Ma San San’s modest home, there’s hardly anywhere to sit. Some 15 people, most of them women, have huddled round a wooden post supporting the roof. They wait in silence. For fortysomething Ma San San and her guests, Sunday is the most important day of the week: it’s when they can…

Demographics

Discovering the secrets of a remote valley

This content was published on Nov 30, 2012

History

Building religious spaces is complicated

This content was published on Nov 29, 2012 The Muslim community in Switzerland is growing, multiplying from just a few thousand in the 1970s to around 400,000 people today. This is mainly due to immigration from former Yugoslavian states and Turkey. The Muslim community includes up to 100 nationalities, and only about eight per cent are from Arab countries. Official statistics say around…

Demographics

More girls at risk of genital mutilation

This content was published on Nov 28, 2012 This figure includes women and children who have already undergone FGM as well as those at risk of the illegal practice. Under new Swiss legislation, which came into force in July, anyone who carries out an act of mutilation can be held responsible and punished. According to the Swiss National Committee of the United Nations…

Demographics

Cracking down on an illegal brothel

This content was published on Nov 27, 2012 On the ground floor there is a café-bar, where customers and prostitutes can meet. The bedrooms – seven of them – are upstairs. The operation starts like in a movie: a convoy of squad cars and an armoured van roar out of the station. After a few miles we arrive at our destination. The building…

Demographics

Debating the right to sell sex

This content was published on Nov 27, 2012 To imagine a society without prostitution is utopian. Those who are willing to offer their own bodies in exchange for money must be allowed to do so without being stigmatised or punished. This is the view put forward by Terre des Femmes Switzerland, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of women. Claudine Esseiva, general-secretary…

Demographics

Photo test

This content was published on Nov 27, 2012 As we head into election week, a key phrase on the minds of both campaigns is “paths to victory”. Under the American electoral college voting system, it doesn’t matter who wins the most votes overall – instead, the key to victory is who wins the popular vote in which states, amassing at least 270 of…

A 200-year old battle unites and divides the Swiss

This content was published on Nov 26, 2012 Of the 9,000 or so Swiss who took part in the campaign – enrolled under Switzerland’s treaty obligations with France – about 400 returned to tell the tale. It was a campaign with few pitched battles; many of those who died perished from cold, hunger and disease and in Russian guerrilla attacks. But the three-day…

Culture

Old soldiers never die

This content was published on Nov 26, 2012 The Russian campaign ended in disaster for Napoleon, who had assembled an army of more than half a million men from all over Europe. During the battle at the Berezina river, where the Swiss suffered terrible losses, the men of the Blenio valley are said to have taken an oath to parade annually in uniform…

Nomadic photographer

This content was published on Nov 24, 2012 Camenisch, who was born in Thun in 1958, started out as a magazine and advertising photographer at the end of the 1970s. His personal projects hark back to the era of traditional black-and-white photo-journalism and portrait photography. Over the years he has come to value slowness, and in his lengthy travels has been drawn to…

Cluster: Swiss Identity

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