BERLIN – Swiss voters on Sunday carefully approved a proposal to ban face masks, as well as the niqabs and burqas worn by some Muslim women in the country, and the ski masks and bandannas used by protesters.
The measure prohibits covering a person in public places such as restaurants, sports stadiums, public transport or simply in the street. It provides exceptions on religious grounds and for safety or health reasons, such as face masks that people now wear to protect against COVID-19, as well as for traditional carnival celebrations. Authorities have two years to draft detailed legislation.
Two Swiss cantons, or states, Ticino and St. Gallen, already has similar legislation that provides for fines for violations. National legislation will bring Switzerland in line with countries such as Belgium and France, which have already introduced similar measures.
The Swiss government opposed the measure as excessive, arguing that covering the entire face was a ‘marginal phenomenon’. It argued that the ban could harm tourism – most Muslim women wearing such veils in Switzerland are visitors from prosperous Persian Gulf states, who are often attracted to Swiss major cities.
Experts estimate that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear blankets in the country of 8.5 million people.
Supporters of the proposal, which was put to the vote five years after it was launched, argued that the full face covering symbolizes the oppression of women and said that the measure was necessary to maintain a basic principle that faces in a free society such as Switzerland’s.
In the end, 51.2% of voters supported the plan. There were majorities against it in six of Switzerland’s 26 cantons – including the country’s three largest cities, Zurich, Geneva and Basel, and the capital Bern. SRF public television reported that voters in several popular tourist destinations, including Interlaken, Lucerne and Zermatt, had rejected it.
Supporters include the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, which is the strongest in parliament. The committee that launched the proposal is led by a party legislator, Walter Wobmann, and also introduced a ban on the construction of new minarets that voters approved in 2009.
A coalition of left-wing parties opposed to the proposal put up signs before the referendum that read: “Absurd. Useless. Islamophobia. ”
Wobmann told SRF that the initiative addressed both a symbol of a completely different value system … extremely radical Islam ‘and security against’ hooligan ‘. He said that “it has nothing to do with symbolic politics.”
Voters expressed their views on two other issues on Sunday. They clearly rejected a proposed voluntary ‘e-ID’ to improve the security of online transactions – an idea that was hampered by private lawyers as it would be issued by private companies, and approved a free trade agreement with Indonesia .