Swiss campaign against double punishment

By Frances Webber

An interview with Heiner Busch, a migrants’ rights activist, who works in the secretariat of Solidarité sans Frontières (SoSF) in Berne and is engaged in the ‘Double no’ (2xNo) campaign.

Frances Webber: In the UK, the debate about the rights of foreign national prisoners is getting more heated. Why did Swiss campaigners launch the ‘Double no’ campaign?

HB: The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) came up with a ‘popular initiative’, a proposal for a constitutional amendment, to deport all foreign nationals convicted of a range of offences which feature in the debate on foreigners and crime, including benefit fraud. They should be deported, regardless of how long they had been in Switzerland or even if they were born here. Parliament agreed with the idea in principle, but said it had to respect EU free movement rights and human rights. It produced a counter-proposal imposing automatic deportation on anyone who has had sentences totalling two years or more, or the ‘daily fine’ equivalent,[1] over a ten-year period. The parliamentary proposal, unlike the SVP one, didn’t need implementing into normal law and thus would have entered into force directly. Both proposals were to be voted on in a referendum in November 2010.

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Source: Free Movement

Interview with Leicester City of Sanctuary Chairperson

By Ambrose Musiyiwa

Pam Inder has been Chair of Leicester City of Sanctuary since August 2011. Before that, she had been volunteering with City of Sanctuary for a couple of years, mostly with the Voucher Exchange Scheme and then, later, as Volunteer Coordinator in which role she interviewed new volunteers and found them roles within the organisation.

In her working life, she was a museum curator for over 20 years and then a university lecturer before retiring in 2006.

Citizens’ Eye spoke to her about Leicester City of Sanctuary and the drop-in centre the organisation launched in May of this year:

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Mugabe Says Things in Zimbabwe are Just Fabulous

By Sarah Hager

President Robert Mugabe granted an interview to CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour today – his first interview with a Western news agency in years. Mugabe spoke to Amanpour while he was in New York attending the UN General Assembly meeting. The interview yielded many choice soundbites. Here are a few of my favorites:

He denied that Zimbabwe is in economic shambles, saying it grew enough food last year to feed all its people. Which is interesting because the World Food Program is busily feeding 1.8 million people in Zimbabwe and Malawi is busily selling maize to Zimbabwe because it needs to import food to feed its citizens.

In refuting criticisms leveled against his government’s policies by Bishop Desmond Tutu, Mugabe said  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the little man.” Hmmm. The Nobel Peace Prize committee might refute that assertion.

“Elections don’t go all that smoothly all the time in many countries,” he said. “Look what happens elsewhere. They didn’t go smoothly here, look at what happened during the first term of Bush.” Ok. Valid that elections don’t always go smoothly. However, if you are going to point specifically at the Bush/Gore contest as your comparative example, you might want to think again; because even though many of us were pretty darn unhappy with how things went down, there are some very stark differences between Zimbabwe in 2008 and the US in 2000.

First, not going “smoothly” is probably a pretty good description of events in the US whereas it masterfully understates events in Zimbabwe. In the time between the actual vote and the final determination of who won, people were not killed, tortured and sexually assaulted in the US in an attempt to create an atmosphere of political intimidation.

Second, our political stand off was resolved by the US Supreme Court and ended with a peaceful transfer of power (whether we wanted it or not). In Zimbabwe, Mugabe had his arm twisted into a power sharing agreement and then signed that agreement with his fingers crossed behind his back.

Now I’m not ever going to say that things are all sweetness and light and wonderful in the US, but I do think Mugabe could have come up with a slightly better comparison if he wanted to make a point that elections don’t always go “smoothly.”

You can watch the interview here and respond in our comments section with your favorite moments.