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Switzerland: Future of political police

01 January 1998

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After years of campaigning by a citizens' initiative, the Swiss government has finally decided to hold a vote on the abolition of the political police on 7 June. The citizens' initiative (SOS-Initiative) had already collected the 100,000 signatures required for the vote in 1991. The aim of the campaign is a constitutional amendment and the introduction of a new article which would state: "The political police is abolished. Nobody shall be kept under surveillance in the exercise of his/her political rights or beliefs."

The SOS-Initiative goes back to 1990 when a parliamentary inquiry revealed that the political police (comparable to MI5) had compiled files on over 900,000 people, two-thirds of them foreigners, out of a population of 6.5 million. The police also held files on 30,000 organisations. The Swiss government responded to criticism by submitting a State Protection Law to parliament in September 1991 (see Statewatch, vol 2 nos 4 & 6, vol 3 no 4), thus putting off the vote in order to restructure and computerise the political police. The objective of the law is to provide a legal basis for the activities of the political police

After years of debate on the draft State Protection Law the parliament passed a law on the "protection of internal security" in March last year which legalises the activities of the political police (see Statewatch, vol 4 no 2, vol 5 no4, vol 6 no 4). A campaign for a referendum against this law failed when the required minimum signatures of 50,000 fell short by 300. Although there will not be a popular vote on this new law, it would become unconstitutional if the SOS-Initiative is successful. Campaigners are not optimistic about their chances of success but this is the first time that people in a European country have voted on the future of "their" political police. The size of the vote will be an indication of how much questions of privacy and political freedom are matters of public concern.

Kommittee Schluss mit dem Schnuffelstaat, Bern.

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