"Burqa Ban" Referendum Passes; Women's Day Protest; Mass Testing For Covid Announced

News For 9 March 2021

Swiss voters approved the banning of facial coverings in public. Niqabs and burqas, which are incidentally worn by almost no one, even among the country's Muslim population, will be banned outside of religious institutions.The new law does not apply to facial coverings for health reasons. Switzerland will join several European countries that have implemented a ban on facial coverings, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria. The ban barely passed a majority vote, with 51.2% of the Swiss voting in support of the proposal. Only six of the country's cantons voted against the ban. One of the largest backers of the initiative was the nationalist Swiss People's Party, which applauded the outcome of the vote and called the new measure "A strong symbol in the fight against radical political Islam." Swiss People's Party President Marco Chiesa said in a statement. "The burqa creates a barrier between the person wearing it and the environment and thus prevents integration into society." The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland said the results were "Islamophobically motivated" and added “today's decision is tearing open old wounds, expanding the principle of legal inequality and sending a clear signal of exclusion to the Muslim minority”. Swiss authorities now have two years to draft the legislation. ********** On Monday 8th of March, International Women's Day, an unauthorized sit-in occurred in the cities of Basel and Zurich in protest. The protests occurred in the city starting from 6 pm. There had been chatter on social media promoting the unauthorized demo and gathering for several days leading up to March 8th, with people receiving SMS messages. In the end, approximately 1000 people participated in Basel, and Police did not arrest anyone, and in fact assisted with clearing the Schifflände area for protesters to stage their demonstration.  Similar instances happened last year when an unauthorized protest occurred on Johanniterbrucke and was broken up by the police. ********** On Friday, the Basel Stadt health department announced plans for mass testing of the population for Covid-19.  The idea is to test people without symptoms in schools and places of work where people aggregate or are at risk of transmission of the virus.  Implementation will begin in public schools at the end of March and will be carried out periodically to catch outbreaks before they spread widely in a population.  Groups identified as. being positive for the virus, will have further testing to isolate and quarantine only the individuals who are specifically positive for the virus, and those directly exposed to them.  Parents will be asked to provide consent for the testing, and participation is voluntary.