Oct 1, 6:01 AM
Vaud prosecutors open case after far-right gathering and antisemitic remarks
What began as a forest meeting in Gros-de-Vaud has turned into a criminal inquiry under Switzerland’s anti-racism law.
A meeting in a Vaud forest was never likely to produce anything resembling civic renewal. It has now produced a criminal case. The cantonal public prosecutor has opened an investigation after a far-right gathering held in mid-July in Gros-de-Vaud, under the grand title “Which future for white Europe?”.
The event was organised by Résistance Helvétique, a nationalist group from French-speaking Switzerland. Videos of the speeches later spread on social media, including material that openly flirted with antisemitism. The most viewed clip has passed 25,000 views, which says as much about online appetite for extremism as it does about the speakers themselves.
According to RTS, the Vaud authorities were particularly drawn to remarks by one speaker who described children taken on school visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau or to the Shoah memorial as judenhörig. The Swiss Federal Commission against Racism told RTS that certain statements made at the gathering could fall under Article 261bis of the Criminal Code, the provision that punishes discrimination and incitement to hatred. The law allows for a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine.
Eric Kaltenrieder, the cantonal attorney general, said the opening of the case is at this stage based on suspicion of breaches of Article 261bis. He added that investigators are still trying to determine who may have committed the offence, especially among the organisers and the speakers. That is the unglamorous part of the state’s job: sorting out who said what after the damage has already been done.
Among the speakers were Jérôme Bourbon and Vincent Reynouard, two French revisionist figures who have both been convicted several times in France, including for denying crimes against humanity. Neither commented to RTS on the criminal proceedings, and neither did the organiser from Résistance Helvétique.
Bourbon leads the weekly Rivarol, founded in 1951 by admirers of collaboration with the German occupier in France. He later played down the significance of his remarks and attacked RTS’s reporting in the latest issue of his paper. Reynouard, meanwhile, had been scheduled to attend another meeting in Toulouse on 19 September, but the authorities banned it because of serious risks that antisemitic and Holocaust-denying statements would be made.
RTS also obtained a copy of the lecture Reynouard had planned to deliver in Toulouse. According to that text, he intended to provoke a debate about the existence of gas chambers. The episode leaves a familiar impression: the speeches are crude, the audience is real, and the law is left to catch up after the fact.
Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com
