Climate activists sentenced for Zurich bridge blockade

Federal Court sentences activists for Zurich bridge blockade Keystone-SDA

The Swiss Federal Court has sentenced three climate activists for a bridge blockade in Zurich. The three were present in 2020 when the Extinction Rebellion group paralysed the Quai Bridge.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

On a Saturday afternoon in June 2020, car and tram traffic on the Quai Bridge came to a standstill for several hours. Around 300 climate activists sat down on the road and tram tracks to draw attention to global warming.

Many of them deliberately wedged themselves in with their arms and legs so that they had to be “untangled” by the police and dragged away. The Federal Court has now sentenced three of them in the last instance, as can be seen from the judgements published on Friday. The cases involve two women and one man.

The Federal Court convicted all three of them of coercion – because people had to accept a diversion – as well as disrupting operations that serve the general public. This refers to the tram service, which was blocked for several hours.

One of the two convicted women received an unconditional fine of CHF400 ($508) because she already had a criminal record. The other two had no previous convictions and therefore received conditional fines.

The Federal Court came to the conclusion that the sentences were compatible with federal law and the European Convention on Human Rights. The activists had deliberately disrupted the daily lives of other people. This disruption had gone beyond the normal exercise of freedom of expression and assembly.

Climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Act Now repeatedly paralysed streets until about two years ago. Currently, this form of climate protest has receded into the background.

Adapted from German by AI/ts

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]