The Alliance

The Alliance

The Alliance Against Racial Profiling is a Swiss-wide movement that fights institutional racism in the policing institution and the border regime, as well as the structural racism across Swiss society which leads to racial profiling. We formed in the fall of 2015 and appeared publicly for the first time in 2016 in the context of the legal proceedings of Mohamed Wa Baile against the Zurich City Police. In the course of these strategic legal proceedings, we continue to develop nationwide activities and support local anti-racist initiatives. We do this with the intention of motivating the public, politicians and civil society to address racial profiling and to commit to thinking and acting critically of racism.

Our goals are:

• Empowerment: we empower people who experience racism, and their allies, to actively engage against structural racism.
• Knowledge production: we research and communicate critical knowledge about racial profiling and structural racism.
• Intervention: we intervene in public discourse and political and administrative institutions.

Our work includes:

• Strategic legal action: We intervene legally with the goal of resisting injustice and raising public awareness. Currently, we are supporting the legal cases of "Wa Baile" and "Wilson A".
• Collaborative Research: We study racial profiling as a structural phenomenon from historical, social science, and legal perspectives. The results are published in books and journals.
• Trial Monitoring: We coordinate an interdisciplinary team that monitors, documents, and analyzes court proceedings that deal with racial profiling. We have studied the trial of Mohamed Wa Baile most extensively.
• Legislative Interventions: We draft opinions and formulate concrete proposals for improvements at the legal level. Examples include the Racial/Ethnic Profiling Opinion and the report to the Human Rights Committee.
• Empowerment initiatives: We develop projects such as Direct Action Teams and Tribunals that empower people to address racism and build their own initiatives.

Our guided beliefs:

• Structural problem: We understand racism as a current social problem based on the historical ideas of "myths of superiority" and a "culture of distinction." Racism is not only an issue of individual racist attitudes or behaviors. It is inherent in racist discourses and institutional actions. This enables discrimination on an ongoing basis throughout Switzerland.
• Taking responsibility: Politics and the judiciary do not take the issue of racism seriously enough, and therefore are also unable to adequately protect basic and human rights. We see it as our responsibility to fight racism powerfully and through creative projects, in order to strengthen our democracy and social cohesion. We do this in solidarity and self-critically, in the most transparent, discrimination-sensitive and inclusive way possible.

For these reasons, we demand:

• A clear legal framework: Binding regulations are needed that impose an unambiguous framework for discrimination-free policing on the police and require them to take measures to raise awareness and prevent discrimination.
• An independent investigation: At the federal level, as well as in the cantons and cities, official entities must be created that are authorized to impartially investigate all complaints of discrimination, mistreatment or racial profiling by the police; to initiate mediation processes; and, if necessary, to file criminal charges or an administrative complaint.
• Democratization of security policy: For police work to be as free as possible from institutional racism, we need a public debate about security politics in Switzerland. This debate can lead to innovative ideas for how to shape security politics in the future.

Statute