13 October 2006
Jews and Muslims in the Swiss city of Geneva are pressing to change a cemetery law in the city that requires all people to be buried in public ceremonies as part of efforts to build tolerance. The city of Geneva has practiced a strict secularism that extends to the grave, requiring that all cemeteries be public and non-denominational, with equal plots aligned the same way. But the city's Jewish and Muslim communities want separate cemeteries that would allow them to bury their dead according their religions' rites, and a proposed law is up for approval by the cantonal assembly. "We need a place where we can bury our dead according to our rituals," said Hafid Ouardiri, spokesman of the Foundation for Islamic Culture in Geneva. The Jewish community for decades managed to skirt the problem because it was able to create a cemetery on the French border, with parking and the entrance on the Swiss side and the graves across the border in France. However, that cemetery is almost full, and the Jewish community wants new space, arguing that the existing law violates freedom of religion and the right to human dignity enshrined in Switzerland's Constitution.
Opponents of the proposal, mainly from the center-right Radicals, Christian Democrats and the Socialists, fear the new law would endanger secular principles and open up frictions between the different religious communities in the overwhelmingly Protestant city. "I don't see why we should again light up the war of religions," Guy Mettan, who heads the Christian Democrat group in the cantonal parliament, told AP. He said his party opposed private cemeteries because everybody is equal in death. Christian Brunier, a Social Democratic deputy in the cantonal parliament, said the majority of the socialists were opposed to private cemeteries. "This would open the door to community divisions" with the risk of a proliferation of sectarian cemeteries, he said in a telephone interview.
On Thursday, the provincial assembly of Geneva referred the government's proposal, which would have allowed the creation of separate confessional sections on public cemeteries, back to the competent committee. With its law from 1876, Geneva is the last of the Swiss cantons that continues to prohibit confessional graveyards.
