Milan, December 2nd, 2009. Racial intolerance is spreading from Italy to Switzerland where a referendum has forbidden the building of new minarets.
It was easy for the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) to obtain 57% of the votes. In the climate of mistrust that exists in today’s Switzerland, how could we be expected to believe that the Swiss people would demonstrate any opening towards the Muslim faith? And why should they, seeing that the media describes all Muslims as enemies of Western Civilization?
Due to these measures that fly in the face of human rights, the European Union is facing a serious attack on its democracy. That is because democracy is founded on Constitutions and charters that protect the rights of minority groups, seeing the majority have the intangible privilege – in democratic institution – of the right to govern. European law is based on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
“Popular votes” – often manipulated through the media and propaganda - cannot and must not replace human rights. In Italy, the far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-minority group parties like the Northern League and Forza Nuova (and now even the Pdl) are asking Italian citizens: “Do you want Roma people?”, “Do you want refugees?”, “Do you want poor foreigners?”. At the same time they forecast catastrophic scenarios or barbaric invasions.
The citizens reply, “no, we don’t want them” and the institutions are allowed to issue racial laws. With referendums we obtain the same results. But all this is illegal and antidemocratic, because it violates the laws that protect minorities, and these laws should never be questioned. To restore democracy we have to prevent propaganda and referendums against minority groups.
If not, on this wave of “popular votes”, soon the more vulnerable social groups will be deprived of their basic individual human rights: “Do you want synagogues?”, “Do you want homosexual couples walking around the streets?”, “Do you want publications of other forms of culture, religion and civilty in circulation?”, “Do you want public funds to be spent on offering assistance to the poor?” “Do you want alternative ways of living to materialism and consumerism to spread?” After a bit of propaganda the answer will always be “no”.
No to differences which frighten “collective sound judgment”. Without the inviolability of human rights, atrocities have always been carried out on behalf of the people: the same people who applauded the Inquisitor as they attended the tragic spectacle of those burnt at the stake; the same people who cheered Hitler and his eager assassins; the same people who on many occasions have taken an active part in pogroms and ethnic purges; the same people who, armed with shovels, axes and sticks massacred the Jewish people in the Baltic States and participated in the bloody operations of the Einsazgruppen.
The same people who again today – in spite of the lessons that recent history is trying in vain to transmit to us – smile at the police and applaud their work when they clear and bulldoze Roma settlements or arrest a few immigrants that have fled from wars or famine in the poorest countries of the world. Level of democracy – zero!
