Glarus open-air assembly rejects burka ban

A two to one majority at this year's Glarus open air assembly rejected a proposal for a burka ban in the Swiss mountain canton Keystone

Citizens in canton Glarus have rejected a proposal to outlaw the wearing of a burka in public.

Participants at the traditional open-air assembly in Glarus voted against the proposal launched by a member of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party in 2015. Twice as many people rejected the idea than those who supported it with a show of hands.

The result means that Ticino is the only one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons to introduce a burka ban. Ticino voters approved the ban in 2013.

The local People’s Party is the biggest of nine political groups in Glarus, a mountain canton southeast of Zurich, but both the Glarus cantonal government and parliament had recommended that voters reject the proposal.

They argued that it was better to wait and see whether efforts to introduce a nationwide burka ban would be successful.

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Had Glarus voters approved the ban, it could have boosted the nationwide campaign to collect the necessary minimum of 100,000 signatures by next September for a vote on a burka ban across Switzerland.