How the traveller community is treated in Switzerland

The editorialist Jean-Noël Cuénod deplores the way the traveller community is treated in numerous Swiss districts. "Systematically, the creation of parking areas and camp sites are refused by cantons, local authorities and above all the community. Because it is indeed the community that pushes these authorities to discriminate against travellers. It is a strange situation where citizens use their democratic power to prevent others from benefiting from their rights. This marks out the limits of our direct democracy and poses this disturbing question: are the sedentary Swiss morally legitimated to impose their way of life on the nomadic Swiss? And yet the freedom of cultural expression is recognised by the European Court of Human Rights. The continent's higher decision-making body underlined in a ruling in 2001 that 'life in a caravan is an integral part Tzigane identity'".

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