UN experts denounce Switzerland for sentencing students over Gaza protests

By Emma Farge

GENEVA, Jan 27 (Reuters) – U.N. human rights experts said on Tuesday they had protested to Switzerland after a group of students were sentenced for trespassing after taking part in pro-Palestinian sit-ins at a Swiss-funded university during the war in Gaza.

The students who took part in the protests in May 2024 were opposing the Swiss university ETH Zurich’s partnerships with Israeli universities, the U.N. experts said.

“Peaceful student activism, on and off campus, is part of students’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and must not be criminalised,” the U.N. experts said, adding that they had written to the Swiss government and the university to raise the issue.

A spokesperson for the Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed it had received the message and said it would respond in due course.

An ETH Zurich spokesperson said it had received the letter. It said that of the 40 people that were reported for trespassing, 11 were ETH members, including nine students and two employees.

“The claim that the two sit-ins were peaceful and aimed at dialogue does not match our perception,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said that the university and the police communicated to the sit-in protesters the potential consequences regarding charges and prosecution for trespassing and gave the demonstrators several deadlines to leave without consequences.

Five students have so far been sentenced for trespassing, resulting in suspended fines of up to 2,700 Swiss francs ($3,516), legal fees of over 2,000 Swiss francs and a criminal conviction on their records which could discourage future prospective employers, the U.N. experts said.

Ten others who appealed the charges await sentencing and two others were acquitted, they said.

($1 = 0.7679 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alison Williams)