Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern,

Liked it or loathed it, the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics had one undisputed high point: Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion belting out Edith Piaf’s L’Hymne à L’Amour from the Eiffel Tower after a four-year performance hiatus due to illness. Which makes one think that, if the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation were to book Dion, a winner for Switzerland of the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, to appear in next year’s edition, she’d undoubtedly blow the roof off the stadium and the TV ratings into the stratosphere.

More on the Olympics, plus other news, in today’s Briefing.

Keystone

In the news: Switzerland nabs its first medal of the Paris Olympics, pharma giant Roche eyes speedy development of anti-obesity drugs, and SWISS cancels flights to Beirut.

• Audrey Gogniat clinched bronze in the 10m air rifle event for Switzerland’s first medal of the Summer Games. Gold went to South Korea’s Hyojin Ban, who beat silver medal winner Yuting Huang of China.
• Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker says the company’s first anti-obesity drugs could be ready for sale “much faster than expected” – possibly by 2028 –  to compete in a market currently dominated by the American company Eli Lilly and the Danish company Novo Nordisk.
• Round-trip flights to the Lebanese capital Beirut have been cancelled until August 5, SWISS parent company Lufthansa announced on Monday, citing security concerns after Israel vowed retaliation for a deadly strike on the Golan Heights blamed on the Lebanese Hezbollah.

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Could Switzerland label the forcible removal of Yenish children genocide?

Over the course of nearly 50 years, hundreds of Yenish children in Switzerland were forcibly taken away from their families to become “useful members of society” as part of a campaign, dubbed Children of the Road, by the organisation Pro Juventute. Between 1926 and 1973, when the programme ended, individuals were also locked up and Yenish women were forcibly sterilised.

Now the Swiss interior ministry has confirmed, following information over the weekend in the NZZ am SonntagExternal link, that a report has been commissioned to analyse whether the actors involved, and the Swiss state, committed genocide or a crime against humanity as defined in international law. One of the central questions it will seek to answer is whether there was an intent, in the legal sense, to exterminate the Yenish as a group.

The Yenish are itinerants living mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and parts of France. In all, nearly 600 children were taken away in Switzerland.

The Yenish have fought for decades to have the campaign labelled a cultural genocide, historian Thomas Huonker toldExternal link Swiss public television SRF, given certain characteristics, including the target to reduce the birth rate among the Yenish. The report was commissioned following requests from the Yenish community, according to the NZZ.

“The victims are old – more and more of them are dying,” Daniel Huber, president of the Yenish and Sinti umbrella organisation Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse, told the newspaper. “It’s about justice – about the injustice being clearly identified.”

Switzerland expressed its regret for the campaign in the 1980s and made compensatory payments that same decade. In 2016, the Yenish were officially designated a national minority group, along with the Sinti.

The report is expected to be completed in autumn.

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Paris 2024 opening ceremony: ‘Appalling conformity’ or a moment of unity?

Friday’s opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Games did more than launch a fortnight of athletic endeavour. It clearly divided opinion. Catholic and other Christian groups in particular denounced a performance evoking Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper as making a “mockery of Christianity”. The scene featured drag queens and a transgender model, among others.

The ceremony’s organisers defended the intent of the show as one of showcasing diversity and celebrating tolerance, but Paris 2024 still issued an apology for any offence taken over that scene.

The ceremony also drew the ire of conservative politicians and commentators. Raphaël Pomey, editor-in-chief of the French-language Swiss magazine Le Peuple, wroteExternal link an opinion piece criticising the event with the title, Cette laideur ne vaincra pas (This ugliness will not triumph).

“I didn’t like it,” Pomey saidExternal link during a debate on Swiss public radio RTS, pointing the finger at the “appalling conformity” of the show, which he said was evident in its use of non-binary and LGBTQ performers.

Not so for RTS reporter Benjamin Luis in Paris, who reminded listeners that France has historically been impertinent and irreverent, and this irreverence was on display on Friday: “It was a celebration of everything that could have illuminated or even sometimes darkened the history of France.”

Far from seeking to divide viewers, the ceremony ultimately had a unifying message, argued Jérémy Seydoux, editor-in-chief at TV channel Léman Bleu. The final words of the show, he said, were those of Edith Piaf. “God unites those who love each other,” are the lyrics that cap L’Hymne à L’Amour, sang by Celine Dion at the end of the ceremony. It brought tears to his eyes, as it did to the eyes of many people who watched, Seydoux said. Dion herself later posted on Instagram that performing at the Olympics was “an honour” that had filled her with joy.