Swiss Move To Ban Nazi Symbols

Geneva, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jan, 2023 ) :It is perfectly legal to display Nazi symbols in Switzerland despite dismay at a large swastika flag being hung at a military memorabilia market earlier this month and Third Reich insignia openly traded online.

But things could be about to change in Geneva at least, one of the country's 26 cantons.

A cross-party group of regional lawmakers wants to change the canton's constitution to "prohibit the display or wearing of Nazi symbols, emblems or any other Nazi object" in public.

They hope Geneva's cantonal legislature will agree to the change on Friday -- International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Museums and film productions would be exempt from the ban, which would bring Switzerland in line with much of the rest of Europe.

The change will have to be approved by the Federal Swiss parliament in Bern and then by a referendum in Geneva.

"It is never too late to prevent Nazi ideas from being expressed via these items," Liberal lawmaker Alexis Barbey, who co-signed the proposal, told AFP.

Francois Lefort of the Greens condemned the "current morbid romanticism" surrounding Nazism and said the trade in fascist memorabilia "supports a racist ideology and is dangerous for democracy." "It's highly symbolic because politicians from different parties have been trying to ban these Nazi symbols and objects for more than 20 years," said Thomas Blasi, a lawmaker from the populist right Swiss People's Party who initiated the proposal.

"Nazism has no place in Europe, no place in Switzerland," said Blasi, a grandson of Gaston de Bonneval, who served as French wartime leader Charles de Gaulle's aide-de-camp between 1945 and 1964.

Bonneval was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and spent two years in Mauthausen concentration camp.

Around 200,000 detainees passed through Mauthausen -- nearly half of whom lost their lives.