New recruits: Swiss army checking more carefully that soldiers are not at risk for abusing use of their arms
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Some 27,000 former soldiers in the Swiss Army, the national militia, were sent letters in March, the army said 2 May, as part of tougher measures to ensure that guns are not used abusively during or after military service. Incidents that have included high-profile suicides and murders using military weapons have been behind a long-running debate over the Swiss militia practice of soldiers keeping their weapons at home.
The Swiss voted in early 2011 to keep weapons at home, but to store live ammunition at army depots. The army had already toughened its stance on weapons in 2009, but after a police officer was murdered in Bern in 2011 it began a two-phase effort to ensure its information about soldiers and weapons is accurate and up to date.
Cantons used to hold information about their soldiers and weapons, these databases were pooled in 2007 to create a single federal database.
The new two-phase programme began checking new recruits more thoroughly and dismissing from the army soldiers involved in “incidents” linked to their weapons.
The second phase, involving the 27,000 letters sent in March, is designed to clear up any discrepancies in the database, which crept in when the information was moved. It called in 415 personal weapons and nearly 6,000 on loan as a result. Weapons are loaned out for target practice. Every citizen-soldier is required to put in a specified number of hours of target practice annually.
Some of the discrepancies have involved the right of Swiss soldiers to buy their weapons for personal use, at the end of their service, but they must obtain a civilian gun permit.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - Thanks to ICRC (International Red Cross) mediation, six police and four soldiers, the last captives in uniform held by Colombian rebels, were released Monday 2 April after 10-14 years in jungle captivity.
Thomas Ess, a Swiss ICRC staff member who until recently was based in Geneva and who is now in Bogotá, was on board one of the aircrafts that picked up the former hostages. Ess describes the scene when the former police officers realized they were being freed.
The hostages, held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, were transferred abroad a Brazilian military helicopter to a military base in Villavicencio, southeast of the capital Bogota, before being united with family members.
The release, announced by FARC on February 26, had been negotiated by the International Committee of the Red Cross and a group of Colombian mediators, headed by a former senator, Piedad Cordoba, who has visited Geneva several times looking for support for her humanitarian mission.
An unknown number of civilian hostages are still being held by the rebels. In February, FARC promised to abandon ransom kidnappings.
Responding to FARC’s hostage release, President Juan Manuel Santos said, “It is a gesture which we appreciate, but it is not enough”.
Links to other sources: El Pais, BBC, The Telegraph
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Deaths of civilians in Syria, at the hands of their government, and deaths of soldiers continue unabated, even as the Arab League pushes President Bashar al-Assad to start a dialogue with the opposition. Aljazeera reports tha 24 people died Monday 17 October in Homs alone, a centre of the popular protests, with at least 8 more people dying in clashes in other towns. At least 11 soldiers are reported to have died in bombing incidents and fighting.
The Economist notes that the death 7 Occtober of Mashaal Tammo, a Kurdish activist in Qamishli, has sparked anger among Kurds, who have until now stayed on the fringes of the protests.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking from Switzerland where he attended the opening of the Interparliamentary Union, the world’s parliaments, urged Bashar to allow a UN human rights team to enter the country and start an inquiry that was mandated in April. Syria has not allowed UN representatives to visit, nor are foreign journalists allowed to work in the country.
Links to other sites: CNN, Economist, Telegraph, UK
The Russian State Archives is publishing documents 28 April, for the first time, with leader Joseph Stalin’s orders in 1943 to kill 22,000 Polish officers in Katyn by shooting them. The Katyn massacres have long been a source of major tension between the two countries and more than 100 documents that Poland would like made public are still secret, but the unprecedented step appears to be a sign of warming relations between Russia and Poland. A group in Russia, Memorial, has been fighting a lengthy legal battle to declassify the documents.
Links to other sites: Moscow Times, Times, UK
Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators Tuesday 2 February that the US should end its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that obliges gay soldiers to keep their sexual preferences to themselves. “”No matter how I look at the issue I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” The policy began in 1993 but the Pentagon says it will now review it.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, NPR, MSNBC
Bern / Chur, Graubuenden, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two guides who have been on trial for their part in the deaths of six soldiers during a military mountain training expedition on the Jungfrau have been acquitted. They were on trial in a Swiss military court for involuntary manslaughter and for not observing military regulations.
Swiss soldiers, part of the weekend commando operation, near the A9 autoroute, Chablais
Taking the fast road down from the high alps: Swiss cows near Crans-Montana
Lausanne/Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland did its best to live up to clichéd images this weekend.
Swiss soldiers were running around in the mountains as part of commando exercises with soldiers from other European countries, the cows came down from their summer pastures in the high alps in many areas – sometimes with garlands and festivities – and families headed for their vineyards in Valais to pick grapes. Valais, the largest wine-producing canton, has 26,000 grape growers, the majority of which are not commercial winemakers.
Indian summer weather graced the activities in many parts of western Switzerland Saturday.
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Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss guards will carry unloaded firearms starting 1 September thanks to a new measure covering Swiss army soldiers on guard duty.
This does not mean the soldiers will carry arms without bullets: the new ruling allows the magazine to be fully loaded but it may not be put in action mode. The commanding officer may, given the circumstances, order exceptions to this rule.
The Pentagon in the US is considering banning all smoking by soldiers, including those in battle, and stopping sales of cigarettes at military bases. A study done for the Pentagon is recommending the ban saying that in the short term it harms battle readiness and in the long term the cost to the health of soldiers is high, which also creates a financial burden for the government. CNN
Thun, Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Army may have bought 12,000 doses of anti-measles vaccine, with Switzerland continuing to have one of Europe’s highest rates of measles, but it did not prevent seven soldiers in the officers’ programme from being quarantined for the highly contagious disease. Some have come down with measles and the others are considered contagious.
