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RACIAL PROFILING

Zurich man takes racial profiling case to European human rights court

Zurich resident Mohamed Wa Baile says he was the victim of racial profiling in 2015. Swiss courts didn't agree. Now he is is taking his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Published: 10 September 2018 11:19 CEST
Zurich man takes racial profiling case to European human rights court
Wa Baile was stopped by police after he 'averted' his gaze at Zurich's main train station. File photo: Depositphotos

One morning in February 2015, Mohamed Wa Baile, originally from Kenya but the holder of a Swiss passport for a decade, was stopped by two police officers in Zurich’s main train station. The officers demanded to see his ID.

Wa Baile, a librarian at the ETH technology institute in Zurich, asked if the officers were looking for a person of colour. When the officers said no, Wa Baile refused to present his papers.

The police officers then conducted a search, releasing him after they found he was carrying a retirement insurance card.

Read also: No Asians – Zurich's ETH hit by racism

Wa Baile was also fined 100 Swiss francs for failing to obey a police instruction.

However, the 44-year-old father of two contested the fine and took the matter to court.

The case eventually made it all the way up to the Federal Supreme Court in Switzerland after both a Zurich district court and appeals court ruled there was no evidence the police had singled out Wa Baile because of his skin colour.

The top court ruled that Wa Baile’s case had rested too heavily on the fact that a police officer had stated in his original report into the incident that he had been stopped because he had averted his gaze.

The court said situational factors were also at play: Zurich is a long-distance transport hub and as such, it sees higher levels of crime.

Under Swiss law, people can only be asked for ID if there are reasonable ground to do so. Wa Baile believes this was not the case for him and has now lodged an application for the matter to be heard by European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) in Strasbourg.

A judgement in the case could set a precedent on the issue of racial profiling with Switzerland's Alliance against Racial Profiling arguing Swiss courts are guilty of a miscarriage of justice and of failing to uphold international principles of non-discrimination.

The EHCR should make clear to police in Zurich that such profiling is not acceptable, Wa Baile was quoted as saying in Swiss tabloid Blick.

“I want to be part of the resistance against racial profiling and motivate people to be more courageous and resist racist police checks,” he said.

RACISM

Why are racist incidents on the rise in Switzerland?

Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism (EKR) announced this week that the number incidents of racism reported to it rose by almost a quarter in 2023.

Published: 29 April 2024 12:22 CEST
Why are racist incidents on the rise in Switzerland?

In a new report published on Sunday, the EKR revealed that 876 incidents of racism had been reported to the body. In comparison, 708 incidents were reported to the EKR in 2022. 

That reflects a rise of 24 percent in the number of reported incidents.

The current conflict in the Middle East was highlighted explicitly as fuelling the rise in incidences of racism.

Some 69 reports related to anti-Arab racism, while anti-Muslim xenophobia was cited in 62 reports. There were also 46 incidents of anti-semitic abuse recorded last year

Read More: Switzerland acknowledges ‘systemic racism’ in the country

Another section of the report significantly identified right-wing populist political campaigns as a significant motivator of racist hate, promoted through flyers with xenophobic slogans or visual tropes. 

Discrimination based on nationality or ethnicity constituted the largest share of reports at 387 reports, followed by anti-black racism with 327 documented incidents.

Additionally, 155 reports related to a person’s legal right to remain in Switzerland, while 137 reported discrimination based on gender. 

Read More: Are foreigners in Switzerland likely to experience some form of racism?

The EKR report also identified where these racist incidents were most likely to occur: Educational institutions, such as schools and universities, were the most frequent locations for incidents at 181 reports, followed by the workplace at 124 incidents and open public spaces at 113. 

With almost two hundred of the 876 reported incidents taking place at schools and universities, Ursula Schneider-Schüttel, President of the EKR, had words of warning: 

“One finding from the report in particular deserves our attention: reports of racial discrimination at school are at the forefront this year. This is worrying.

“School should be where children and young people are protected from discrimination.

“We must therefore ask ourselves what responsibility educational institutions have in ensuring a non-discriminatory learning environment and what it takes to achieve this responsibility can be met.” 

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