BERN, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland, which in 2010 signed the Council of Europe (EC) treaty covering sexual exploitation of minors has now completed legislative changes that will make it a crime to solicit, encourage or take part in sexual acts with 16- to 18-year-olds, for remuneration.
The legal revisions extend the age of minors where remunerated sexual acts are concerned to age 18.
The revisions are now open for public consultation, until November, at which point the government will take into consideration suggested modifications before the changes take effect. The EC treaty nevertheless went into effect in July 2010 and Swiss legal changes align the country with the treaty’s requirements.
The treaty is the first international effort to create a set of rules that call for penal codes to punish child sexual abuse and exploitation.
It covers four main areas for minors: sexual abuse, prostitution, pornography and encouraging children to take part in pornographic “representations”, including film and photography.
The main change required for Swiss laws to be in line is the age extension. The current legal situation is that a client of a child under age 16, who consents and is remunerated, risks prison only if he or she is more than three years older.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A former senior manager of RSR, Swiss public radio, who appealed charges of hard core pornography, lost his case Monday 16 November. He was instead given a suspended sentence and a fine for 10 days of CHF100 a day for having hard-core pornography on his office computer after the judge ruled that the man had voluntarily downloaded 13 images of 12- to 13-year-old girls involved in sexual activities.
US Embassy representatives in Beijing met with Chinese officials from two ministries in Beijing Friday 19 June to discuss China’s tough new restrictions on Internet access and to ask China to engage in dialogue about the issues raised by the curbs on access. In what the Financial Times describes as a “rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years” the US State Department is saying that the free flow of information but also trade issues are at stake. China will require all new computers sold from 1 July to have Green Dam filtering software. China 18 June ordered Google to prevent access to web sites outside China, citing pornography concerns. The US-based company has recently overtaken Baidu, the main Chinese search engine. Xinhua
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Judge Eric Cottier in Lausanne is opening a complementary inquiry in the trial of an ex-senior manager at radio station RSR in order to clarify the role of pornographic images at the centre of the case. According to 20 Minutes the judge has complained that the case brought before him is not sufficiently clear, and he is asking the police, who confiscated the images from a company server, to bring them to the court.
Bern, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – The upper house of the Swiss parliament has voted strongly in favour of banning all cell phone pornography, including soft porn. The lower house is expected to follow suit. The move comes in the wake of several incidents involving gang rapes and other sexual violence by teenagers. Under current Swiss law it is a crime to distribute pornography to children under 16, but the new proposals would ban it altogether from the cell phone market.
