Swiss police cracking down on Tibetans protesters during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Geneva in January 2017
Photo: Jigme Ugen/facebook
Switzerland places human rights at the core of the nation’s value system; it is the depository state of the Geneva Conventions and the place where several human rights-related non government organisations (NGOs) have been established or headquartered, including the Red Cross.
In keeping with this tradition, Switzerland hosts around 4,000 Tibetan refugees; this is the largest Tibetan exile community in Europe. Anti-Communist sentiment in Switzerland and a feeling that the Tibetans were “mountain people like us”, fuelled the solidarity that the Swiss felt with the Tibetans after the Chinese annexed Tibet in the 1950s. Despite this, recent events in Switzerland concerning the Tibetan community in exile there have caused some to question whether Switzerland remains steadfast in its commitment to human rights. In July 2016, the Swiss government mandated that Tibetan refugees would no longer be able to state their nationality as “Tibetan” or “stateless”, they would instead have to change their nationality to “Chinese”. This policy was lauded by the Global Times, an organ of the Chinese State in an article last month.
The Tibetans and the Swiss may share mountains, but the Chinese have begun to share something with the Swiss that carries far more clout, their increasing wealth. The Swiss have been developing increasingly close economic ties with the Chinese government in recent years. Switzerland recognised China as a market economy in 2007; in 2013 they became the first continental European country to sign a free trade agreement with Beijing; last year the Swiss joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a key component of President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. Investments by Chinese companies in Switzerland quadrupled last year to reach $4.8 billion (£3.9 billion). These investments are helping to develop the Swiss urban system, particularly the three metropolitan areas of Zurich, Geneva and Basel.
Photo: Jigme Ugen/facebook
Raising the issue of Tibet with the Chinese could slow the steady flow of Chinese capital into the Swiss economy. Relations between the two countries previously suffered a setback in 1999 when Tibetan protesters disrupted the visit of then Chinese President Jiang Zemin to Bern. The ’99 incident, during which an egg thrown by a protestor narrowly missed Zemin, soured relations temporarily, but they had recovered sufficiently by 2007 for officials from both countries to state that an “unbelievable dynamic”existed between them. A repeat of the ’99 incident is not in Switzerland’s economic interest. In a world where China is becoming an increasingly powerful economic player, opposition to its human rights abuses will be silenced. There is speculation that this is what is behind the arrest last month of Tibetan activists protesting during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Switzerland; they claimed that unlike the Tibetans at the protest, a Chinese group was given freedom of expression. This has led to Wangpo Tethong, a Tibetan activist based in Switzerland, filing a complaint against Berne City Council and the police for “violating the constitutional right of freedom of expression during the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Switzerland”.
An article in swissinfo.ch drew attention to the ongoing discontent during the Bern Tibetan Uprising Day rally on March 10, “400 Tibetans gathered in the Swiss capital Bern to commemorate the 1959 uprising against Chinese forces in Lhasa. They also expressed anger at being categorised as Chinese nationals by the authorities.”
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