Switzerland: political police report
01 July 2003
On June 11, after three years of work, the research group established by the government to investigate the history and functioning of the security service published its report (see Statewatch vol 2 nos 4 & 6). The report, which gives many details for example on illegal telephone tapping and on the preparations for the internment of "dangerous" and "suspect" citizens, was criticized in the Swiss press for the fact that none of the groups and individuals under surveillance nor other sources had been consulted to verify the correctness of the information in the security service dossiers. From the report it becomes clear that a considerable amount of this information was utterly unreliable. It would have been relevant to see what the motives were behind the storing and disseminating of such information and what were the results. The experts commission, in which only the governing parties are represented, concludes that the Staatsschutz has always had a disproportionate interest in the Left, even during the Second World War. Based on unrestrained access to its files, the authors judged the Staatsschutz to have been an organization characterized by "arrogance and unprofessionality". This was documented by, for example, the perception by the Staatsschutz of the feminist movement in the late 1970s as primarily a Moscow-infiltrated phenomenon. Staatsschutz employees were poorly trained and concentrated on collecting data while ignoring analysis. The government has declined to comment on the book: it has announced a bill on the Staatsschutz for September.
The Swiss Federal Court recently ruled that the storing by the political police of incorrect or even harmful information on individuals does not constitute a violation of personal rights as long as such data have not been transmitted to third parties. So far 102 applications for compensation have been made of which only 3 have been settled out of court. Over 5,000 persons are still in the procedures to get access to their files. The office responsible for the procedures directed by Mr Rene Bacher, has estimated that the average individual is registered in 10 dossiers, each containing an average of 10 pages.
Georg Kreis et al Staatsschutz in der Schweiz. Die Entwicklung von 1935-1990. Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt 1993 671pp ISBN 3-258- 04803-7 SFr. 48.- also available in French).