BERLIN – Swiss voters on Sunday narrowly approved a proposal to ban face coverings, both the niqabs and burqas worn by a few Muslim women in the country and the ski masks and bandanas used by protesters.
The measure prohibits covering the face in public places such as restaurants, sports stadiums, public transport or simply walking on the street. It provides for exceptions for religious sites and for safety or health reasons, such as face masks that people now wear to protect against COVID-19, as well as for traditional Carnival celebrations. Governments have two years to draft detailed legislation.
Two Swiss cantons, or states, Ticino and St. Gallen, already have similar legislation requiring fines for violations. National legislation will align Switzerland with countries such as Belgium and France that have already taken similar measures.
The Swiss government opposed the measure as excessive, arguing that full face coverage is a “marginal phenomenon”. It argued that the ban could hurt tourism – most Muslim women who wear such veils in Switzerland are visitors from affluent Persian Gulf states, often drawn to Swiss lakeside towns.
Experts estimate that in the country of 8.5 million people, at most a few dozen Muslim women wear full face covers.
Supporters of the proposal, which went to vote five years after its launch, argued that the full face covering symbolizes the oppression of women and said the measure is necessary to uphold a basic principle that faces should be shown in a free society Switzerland.
Ultimately, 51.2% of the voters supported the plan. Majorities opposed it in six of Switzerland’s 26 cantons – including the country’s three largest cities, Zurich, Geneva and Basel, and the capital, Bern. SRF’s public television reported that voters in several popular tourist destinations, including Interlaken, Lucerne and Zermatt, rejected it.
Supporters included the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, the strongest in parliament. The committee that launched the proposal is headed by a party legislator, Walter Wobmann, and also initiated a ban on the construction of new minarets that voters approved in 2009.
A coalition of left-wing parties opposed to the proposal placed signs in front of the referendum that read: “Absurd. Useless. Islamophobic. “
Wobmann told SRF that the initiative aimed both at “a symbol of a completely different system of values … extremely radical Islam” and at security against “hooligans.” He said that “this has nothing to do with symbolic politics.”
Voters had their opinions on two other issues on Sunday. They clearly rejected a proposed voluntary “e-ID” to improve the security of online transactions – an idea that contradicted privacy advocates, as it would have been enacted by private companies – and narrowly approved a free trade agreement with Indonesia.