Big news in Geneva the past couple of days. First of all, one has to know that every summers, wealthy tourists from the Gulf come to Geneva for shopping and enjoying the fair weather. These valuable arabic people contribute to around 20% of the hotel reservations which is a pretty big deal. Not counting all they spend in shops, car rentals, restaurants etc. One year, the bill even went up to half a billion dollars!
But here’s the problem. It’s been several years now that Geneva is facing an obvious rise of criminals mainly from Eastern Europe (Kosovo, Albania, Georgia…) and North Africa (Algeria, Morocco…) as well as South Africa. For a while, citizens of Geneva were the only victims but recently, crimes started to reach the tourists. Geneva has a reputation of being rich… and safe. If you add the Schengen deal (country borders basically don’t exist anymore), you pretty much have Switzerland completely naked around Europe and thus, opened to anyone.
Geneva people have been saying it for years without any political reaction until recently. A Saoudian tourist got pretty badly injured and it is suspected that it was an aggression from a foreign criminal. This led to a documentary from the 2nd biggest Arabian television network after Al-Jazira, Al-Arabia. That documentary gives Geneva quite a bad impression by stating that our police is not doing its job and that our city is no longer safe for Arabic tourists. I can’t really blame them for that as if a foreign criminal is caught, it’s released a few days later at most, no matter what he does…
All of the sudden the whole thing becomes a huge deal as a big part of the economy is at stake here. Even the diplomatic representative of the Gulf is officially stating that “should Geneva not do something drastic about it, then tourists back home will be strongly advised NOT to come to Geneva anymore”. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I thought it was funny to represent two people from North Africa who both are in Geneva for very different reasons. On a little side note, pretty sad that our government is reacting to foreign television when its very own citizens have been shouting in the dark for ages…
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Hi Jundooz, I am writing an article for a Zurich-edited Russian-language monthly magazine, the subject being is… guess! CRIME in Geneva.
It’s a voluntary contribution, I am not paid for, and so are (usually) people who lend them images / pixz.
ZE BIG question is: could I possibly use your drawing as an illustration to my article? I am not in a position to negotiate any settlement for them, so if you really don’t like that, just forget it. I simply liked you drawing so I thought it could be a good illustration to my furture article,
Thanks in advance,
Nicolas
Dear Gagarine, thank you for your comment. I have replied you via email about it. Thanks for passing by!
Hi,
I remember the first time ever I came to Geneva. It was in 1986, I came with my father for the Geneva Motor Show. I thought everything was amazing, calm, orderly, clean… just a great feeling. I recently came back to Geneva and got verbally agressed by a North African at the Cornavin Railway Station… Quite a change. Not to mention many building facades are now tagged and dirty and the city doesn’t feel safe anymore. There are strange people looking at you in the city center or by the lake when you pass by. There are groups of apparently foreign jobless people cooking something up. Really bad feeling. I have a job offer in Geneva with a big salary but I question whether I will accept because the city doesn’t feel safe for my wife and kid.
Switzerland has a society based on trust and honesty. I hate people who are destroying that by bringing crime here. This will destroy relationships between citizens just as what happened everywhere else. People will come to not trust each other anymore and this great society based on trust will evaporate.
I don’t like it one bit. I’d say what I have seen in France. I have seen the French become scared of North Africans and letting them do whatever they want in their country. And I’m not a racist. I’m tanned and I acknowledge there are some great people in North Africa too, some of them I could call my friends. But there are so many of them who do mischief that they destroy the reputation of the others.
And one thing also. It is said that, although the crime rises drastically in Geneva, police forces do not increase. I respond to that by saying that police cannot be everywhere all the time. In the past, when a teenager did something wrong, adults had the courage to tell him so. Now, people are scared. The more people are scared, the worse it becomes.
Cheers,
A pissed off foreigner who loves Switzerland.
Heinz, I hear you. in 1986, I was 11 years old. I grew up in Pâquis, filled with Spanish, Italians and other immigrants among my best friends. We used to play football outside until 21:00 – 22:00 without having my parents worrying about me. Time has definitely changed as the drug dealers have taken control in school playgrounds now.
But that problem is political and here are a few examples:
1. Pay a fine per day : you break the law? now you pay a fine relative to your salary. Some criminals got away with rape by paying a few hundred francs instead of doing jail time.
2. Overpopulated prison. Politics finally decided to build a new prison for… 2017. And that’s only 500 more rooms.
3. Foreign criminals are not being expelled from Switzerland. So they’re released back in the streets.
There will be political elections this October in Geneva… hopefully things will change even though I’m not so sure. Right now, you’re more safe in New York than in Geneva, all proportions respected.