Good on them for owning up to what they did wrong. Most countries are well behind this
9
Educational-Art-851510 hr ago
+12
What's the actual details behind this beyond not accepting the reduced quality of life resulting from nomadic life?
I'm not familiar with the Manouche and Sinti ethnic groups, but other traveller communities (e.g European Roms) immensely harm the future of their children in order to uphold "traditional way of life".
If the ruling is little more than "governments have no right to forcibly remove children from dangerous situations where they are part of a minority ethnic group", then that's basically the Swiss becoming a victim of their own international virtue signalling.
12
EconomicRegret29 hr ago
+9
Nomadic people in Switzerland are educated (e.g. flexible support, attending different schools during the same year, distance learning, etc.). It's obligatory. I had nomadic people in my ~~classes~~ *school*: they come for some time, then disappear, and you finally see them again the following year, without any gaps in their education.
Also, the government does "track" them, i.e. same as sedentary families (e.g. healthcare, welfare of children, etc.).
9
Jostain9 hr ago
I think your theoretical children is irrevocably harmed by having a parent that unitonically uses virtue signaling. People are allowed to be poor and uneducated and do things that are bad for their childrens future but we allow it because the alternative is worse. The only reason you identify a problem here is because there is an ethnic component and states are not allowed to make decisions about people based on etcnic groups. There was a war about that and everything.
0
KowardlyMan10 hr ago
+1
Why do they harm the future of their children?
1
VeryBadCaseOfLigma10 hr ago
+22
They set them up for a life of extreme poverty, with no education. Often they just become professional beggars and that's the nicest thing I can say about their way of life...
22
EconomicRegret29 hr ago
+3
Nomadic people in Switzerland are educated (e.g. flexible support, distance learning, etc.). It's obligatory. I had nomadic people in my classes: they come for some time, then disappear, and you finally see them again the following year, without any gaps in their education.
3
CobberCat9 hr ago
+7
In regions with large Roma populations, most don't even finish primary school. See e.g. https://www.unicef.org/bih/en/roma-children
7
EconomicRegret28 hr ago
+1
This article is about Switzerland and its own nomadic peoples (Jenish and Sinti). They're educated, professionally trained, and are "tracked" by the Swiss government. They're very different from the Roma.
You can't just generalize Roma's issues to all nomadic peoples.
1
BezugssystemCH19037 hr ago
+1
This is not the case in Switzerland:
>Children of the Yenish and Sinti communities navigate a balance between compulsory schooling and a nomadic way of life. Schools and local authorities develop distance-learning solutions during the traditional travelling season. This ensures that formal education remains possible without restricting their nomadic way of life.
https://www.stiftung-fahrende.ch/de/geschichte-und-gegenwart/alltag/schule-74.html
Where things are a bit of a struggle is in the area of vocational training and university degrees. But here in Switzerland, we have a different approach to entering the workforce through apprenticeships, which, unlike in other countries, is highly regarded.
For example, I don’t have a university degree either, and with 10 years’ professional experience, I earn around €8,600 a month as a civil engineering draughtsman.
1
Important-Low-392210 hr ago
+4
Did they persecute any digital nomads I wonder?
4
techlogger7 hr ago
+1
Chasing them out of Starbucks
1
Loki-L9 hr ago
+4
Nomadic people in this case means Roma or more specifically Sinti and Yenish people.
Since Switzerland joined the relevant EU accords in the late 90s they have been officially recognized as protected minorities.
Before that and until really quite recently they have been subjected to the same sort of measures to 'civilize' them that let to the creation of things like 'boarding schools' in places all over the world where dominant ethnic groups convinced themselves it was their job to stamp out a minorities culture.
What makes the situation of groups like the Sinti somewhat worse is that authorities had an easier time justifying their actions by convincing themselves and others that the culture they were trying to drag the children out of was one inextricably linked to crime.
It is easy to turn a blind eye to the persecution and mistreatment of minorities when you just see them as beggars, thieves and conmen.
It is easy to convince yourself that you are actually helping children by making them attend schools were they learn to fit into 'normal' society.
It is easy to think you are helping people when you mistakenly believe that their culture is terribly mysogynistic and violent.
It also is easy to hate people who are different especially if you credibly suspect that some of them have robbed you at some point.
Things are more complicated than that of course.
Nowadays a lot of Sinti are actually settling down and harder to tell from everyone else while people completely unrelated to Roma and Sinti get lumped in with them because they practice some sort of nomadic lifestyle.
4
CobberCat9 hr ago
+10
> It is easy to turn a blind eye to the persecution and mistreatment of minorities when you just see them as beggars, thieves and conmen.
100 % of my interactions with Roma were them acting as beggars, thieves, conmen or vandals. That doesn't help.
10
BezugssystemCH19038 hr ago
+1
All these people have been granted citizenship by law, so they are Swiss citizens, do military or civilian service, and pay taxes.
So far, I have had no negative experiences with this group of people.
1
OutsideMarketing192911 hr ago
-6
The country that markets itself as the global benchmark for neutrality and human rights has its own skeletons that only really got acknowledged decades after the fact.
-6
chromeshiel10 hr ago
+8
If imagine all countries have. But it's cleaning house by itself, instead of denying wrongdoing as it's usually the case.
8
iuuznxr10 hr ago
+7
The acknowledgment has been ongoing for decades. Switzerland offered an official apology in 1986 followed by reparations in 1988, then they funded commissions to research what happened, etc. What they now did was acknowledging that it constituted as a crime against humanity, while some consider it a genocide.
7
Zizimz10 hr ago
+6
Oh we've discovered plenty of skeletons in the past decades. From Jewish 'dormant' assets still in Swiss banks in the 90s, to children the authorities had removed from their parents for their own good, and who were kept in defacto servitude by local farmers (Verdingkinder) , to the treatment of nomadic people. But I'm glad we are at least trying to come to terms with our past.
6
basicastheycome10 hr ago
+4
To be fair, I don’t think that there’s a country which doesn’t have their fair share of skeletons in the closet. What’s important is whether or not nation acknowledges them and not adding more skeletons to that bloody closet.
4
KowardlyMan10 hr ago
+2
If you have skeletons everywhere, you're still neutral. Picking your skeletons, now that would break neutrality!
2
[deleted]10 hr ago
-2
[deleted]
-2
bolkonskij10 hr ago
+2
France did a lot of bad things, but it never did nuclear tests in "villages" but in the Algerian desert, like USA in Nevada or USSR in Kazakistan or Siberia; then the fallout spreaded in the neighbour countries, like Nigeria or Ivory Coast, but it's not the same thing than "bombing a village"...
2
teh_herper11 hr ago
-10
It's ok guys they're a neutral country, especially if you're doing business
-10
Dear-Appointment803910 hr ago
+9
It’s the parliament owning up for their historic mistakes. Read the article instead of turning all emotional over a headline.
9
teh_herper10 hr ago
-9
So a declaration made and back to business as usual, got it.
-9
Suspicious-Truth584910 hr ago
-6
Swiss: "Maybe we should have grown some balls and fought the nazis too"
-6
EconomicRegret28 hr ago
+3
The Swiss military has been neutral for *500 years!* No military alliances, no protection from a big neighbor. Nothing. That too requires some balls. While Europeans were slaughtering themselves in large-scale transformative wars every 20-30 years during this whole time, and almost continuously in terms of small-scale conflicts, insurrections, or border disputes. Adding to that, between 1026 and 1526, war was even a constant, almost annual feature! With many foreign powers militarily occupying and genociding the Swiss for about 2000 years, -400 to +1648. The Swiss, very understandably, went "*F*** That! We're out of European wars and will only protect our borders!"*
It's incredible that they kept this commitment for 500 years! So much, that Europe (and later the world) officially recognized it in 1815. Very understandable. If I too had such huge, powerful but a****** neighbors, constantly fighting each other, home-takeovering/cuckooing my own home, killing/raping my family members, and that for thousands of years, I too would want to stay away of their disputes at all costs.
3
Suspicious-Truth58498 hr ago
+1
Yeah took a lot of balls to do nothing and watch their German neighbors kill 6 million people including women and children but hey at least they didn't take in a bunch of art work and valuables that were stolen by Nazis from France or other European counties. At least they didn't side with Nazis unlock Italians or Japan.
1
EconomicRegret27 hr ago
+1
“Switzerland just sat there and did nothing” is way too simplistic. During World War II they were a tiny country surrounded by Axis powers, so their whole strategy was armed neutrality and survival. They mobilized, planned to retreat into the Alps, and even shot at or interned any foreign troops crossing their borders, including Nazis.
Were they morally clean? No. Swiss banks and businesses still traded with Nazi Germany and Switzerland restricted Jewish refugees later in the war. But that kind of economic cooperation and opportunism wasn’t unique, companies and institutions in the US, France, and elsewhere did similar things e.g. Bush family, Ford, IBM, GM, Vichy Regime (French Nazis happily collaborating with Germany), L'Oréal, Renault, Louis Vuitton, SNCF, French banks; even the nice neutral Sweden literally gave up its neutrality and sided with the Nazis, neutral Portugal and Spain literally took Nazi gold too, etc..
Reality is messy: Switzerland didn’t heroically save everyone. But Switzerland also didn’t just sit back doing nothing. Like most countries at the time, they made a mix of defensive moves, compromises, and some pretty questionable decisions.
E.g. 30k Jewish refugees were welcomed in Switzerland, among the highest in the world, on per capita, and overall 300k refugees overall, for a population of only 4 million: while America had quotas too on Jewish refugees, it took far less than the legal quotas allowed, and way less than Switzerland compared to its size (e.g. America rejected the MS St. Louis because it was carrying over 900 Jewish refugees thus they were denied entry to the U.S., forcing the ship back to Europe and to their death in the Holocaust.)
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