The neighbouring towns of Nidau and Biel/Bienne agreed last year to accept 50 caravans from the Swiss travellers’ group known as the Yéniche. It was a temporary arrangement and a reminder that no long-term solution has been found to accommodate this persecuted group, most of whom are Swiss citizens. When some 70 caravans arrived in Nidau, at the extreme end of Lake Bienne, in late April 2014, they were turned away. Following several meetings between cantonal officials and Yéniche representatives, an agreement was reached by the two municipalities to allow them to use the grounds of the former site of Expo.02 until more permanent locations are found.
Amnesty International (AI) has pressured Swiss authorities to find fixed places for both Yéniche and Roma communities, noting that Switzerland has failed to honour a 2003 court ruling that all travellers be provided with places to live that respect their cultures. AI is also calling for an independent investigation into a police crackdown on the Yéniche who went to Bern in late April 2014 demanding a place to stay. “It was a perfectly peaceful demonstration yet the police detained 100 Yéniche in a school gym for several hours,†said Denise Graf of AI’s Bern office. “They stamped their hands with indelible ink and used dogs to guard them.†The group is now back in Nidau awaiting a decision by cantonal authorities on where they can go. “They need places to stay,†said Graf, “otherwise they sleep in their carsâ€.
An estimated 35,000 Yéniche are legally registered as citizens in Switzerland, most of them in Canton Graubünden. Although Yéniche are often confused with Roma, some ethnologists believe they are descendents of the Celts. Others hypothesize that traces of Yéniche in Switzerland dating back to the 11th century connect them to groups from the Middle Ages who spoke Rotwelsch, a so-called “thieves’ argotâ€. This group reportedly descends from Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi merchants, beggars and bandits. Today the Yéniche represent the third-largest nomadic people in Europe, living mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgian Wallonia and parts of France. Most are practising Catholics.
For nearly half a century, up until the 1970s, Switzerland had a settlement campaign for the Yéniche to combat “vagrancyâ€. This included a policy known as Kinder der Landstrasse (Children of the road) that forced their children to be adopted by “ordinary†Swiss citizens in an effort to eliminate Yéniche culture. Other children were put in orphanages and even prisons. Today the Yéniche are an official national minority and most have become citizens, with about 5,000 remaining semi-nomadic.
Those who continue to pursue seasonal wanderings are often confused with Roma, partly because they live on the margins of society, but also because they pursue similar jobs as weavers, scrap dealers or tool grinders. The Yéniche say their language is different and that their encampments are well off the main roads, unlike the Roma who prefer to be near highways.
By Pamela Taylor
Pamela Taylor is a Geneva-based writer with a long career as a journalist for National Public Radio, Voice of America, AFP’s English Service, and others, in Central Europe, Bosnia and Kosovo
More on this:
We have never spoken so much about the Y̬niche in this canton (24 heures Рin French)
Lausanne offers 5 months of respite to the Y̩niche (24 heures Рin French)
A temporary solution for the Y̩niche (Le Matin Рin French)
New provisional solution for the Y̩niche in the canton of Vaud (RTS Рin French)
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Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Germany and Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
 Based on the terrible battle of Gallipoli (Canakkale in Turkish), which took place in the Dardanelles during WWI, and then later the hatred between the Turks, the occupying British and the marauding Greeks, the tone is anti-war, depicting the senseless sacrifice of countless young lives (some 100,000 between the two sides) to the power-play of world leaders and inept military commanders. To counter the tragedy, Crowe accentuates the camaraderie between the father and the Turkish general (Yilmaz Erdogan), who ends up helping him in his quest. There are the few clichéd characters and situations, but this is old-fashion cinema, with heart, adventure and hope, despite the sombre theme. Could Crowe be an old softie under that tough veneer? And almost as fine a director as he is an Oscar-crowned actor?
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SELMA **** This is such a fine, true, important film – both for U.S. history and in honor of a great leader – that it should have walked away with best film, best actor, best direction and editing. It should have taken all the awards it deserved, and did not get. Except for only one, the inspiring hymn Glory, which took the Oscar for Best Song. Once again, life is not fair.
