GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The hottest media story in Geneva in recent weeks has been about safety in the city, the rising rate of crime, the poor police response, the danger to foreigners visiting the city, the danger of foreigners bringing crime into the city: in short, Geneva, that haven of peace, isn’t what it used to be.

Here’s my suggestion: let’s lighten up and let the Swiss politicians fight it out.

Crime-fighting and politics, old bedfellows

Rising crime is a favourite topic of politicians everywhere in an election year, and citizens in Switzerland will elect their parliament later this year.

Geneva has had a tug of war over the police department for several years, so the themes of not enough support for the police, and its opposite, police are not being managed well, resurface like clockwork.

Swiss media have sunk their teeth into this story

World Radio Switzerland, WRS, kicked off the latest round by reporting on the mugging of the son of a US diplomat in mid-July. It was a story that deserved to be told. Illustré carried an interview with photos of the young man and the other Edipresse publications, notably the Tribune de Geneve picked up the thread and ran with it.

The initial story has been extended, in headlines, to not just one, but several international workers who are victims of assaults in the city. The message sent by the UN to its workers this summer, which prompted the news stories, was the result of not just one attack on a diplomatic family member, but two. There are plenty of other stories around, of course, as there are in any city.

WRS today published a story that begins: “From muggings in the middle of the night to burglar alarm scams—the public’s perception is that crime in Geneva is out of control. Many people have related their stories to WRS and other Swiss media as well social networking sites . . .” (Italics are mine)

Who is measuring public perception and how

The problem with media stories about public perceptions is that they are whatever the editors decide they will be, for unless you hire a creditable polling agency to survey a large sample audience, you simply don’t know: it’s too easy to find large numbers of people who will back any point of view for stories like this.

Do foreigners really believe Geneva is not safe? Is it less safe than it used to be? That it’s not a city where you can go out at night? That is doesn’t compare well to other cities around the world? And what kind of cities do you compare it to – ones of the same size or of the same degree of openness to the world?

We have two sources of information on public perception it seems: news media, part of whose job is to create stories that pull in audiences, and social media, who for all the large numbers of members they claim, tend to have the same relatively small and vocal groups speaking up on hot topics.

Crime in Switzerland low, compared internationally

So what’s the reality?

Geneva police statistics show crime up in the first half of 2011 compared to the previous year, but the figures were actually lower during the summer months. The city’s crime rate fell by 5 percent in 2010. It has the highest crime rate of Swiss cities, but to keep this in perspective, four of the city’s five murders in 2010 were cases of domestic violence and crime statistics have been harmonized nationwide only since 2010, so federal officials warn they should be read with caution.

Swiss crime statistics are low compared to other countries, for crimes recorded by police. Assault, for example: the Swiss rate is 2.9 per 100,000, compared to 281.6 for the US, 150.4 for New Zealand, 32.2 for England and Wales and 3.1 for Australia. France, to my great surprise, is at the bottom of the assault rates in major countries, with only 0.3 per 100,000. France’s rates for intentional homicide and rape are twice as high as Switzerland’s.

Car theft? Switzerland is the number one country for this. Draw your own conclusions.

Of course, these are based on figures recorded by police, and I’ve been hearing arguments that not all crimes are reported to the police. There is little evidence this happens more often in Switzerland than elsewhere, however. And comparative statistics are also a couple years old. In Geneva, crime went up in 2009, went down in 2010, appears to be going up again, but the percentages look high because the base is small.

The other public perception

Here’s my personal perception, my two bits based on a handful of conversations with others who have lived in the area for several years. I could say public perception corresponds to this:

• I don’t think Geneva is as safe as it was 25 years ago when I arrived, but I also don’t think Paris is as safe as it was 25 years ago when I left it, and I think this is probably true for many cities. There are more drugs, populations are larger, transient populations move around more easily.
• I think Geneva is nevertheless a much safer city than most but like any urban area, there are and will be muggings, thefts and worse. The police force probably does need beefing up, another remark that could be applied to most cities I know.
• Urban living requires paying close attention to your surroundings, avoiding situations and places where trouble is more likely to occur, stirred with a good dose of common sense. A city you don’t know is generally more dangerous, as is any city when you’ve been out drinking. And any city will feel more dangerous if you don’t tune out people who turn unfortunate personal experiences into generalizations. Your surroundings are as scary as your sense of drama lets them be, so if you don’t want to live in fear, trying reining it in.

I feel as sorry as anyone else for people who’ve run into trouble, through no fault of their own, and the young son and daughter of diplomats certainly didn’t deserve the treatment they got at the hands of thugs. I think the public should know about it.

But I don’t believe we should make them victims again, to suit personal or professional needs to dramatize what happened to them.

My own son was mugged at age 19 in Vancouver, his first month at university there (he managed to get away with minor injuries by running very fast, not always an option). I was held up at gunpoint in a dark courtyard in Paris, with insinuations about sex, when I had been there only a month, several years ago. When I had been in Geneva a short while a close friend was traumatized by a ghastly acid-throwing incident in the laundry room of a building, which disfigured a work colleague. The student apartment two girlfriends and I had vacated a week earlier one summer in Milwaukee was broken into by a drug hustler who had the wrong building; one of the girls who had just moved in was cruelly raped and beaten up.

Most people I know who live in cities have tales like this to tell. But urban life continues, and people find their own ways of dealing with safety issues and crime.

That doesn’t make for exciting journalism or social network chatting, though.

It’s time to be responsible news consumers and move on.

Chateau de Coppet, home to the IMMA

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Coppet will formally introduce the new home of the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA) next week at the Château de Coppet, and the arrival of violin star and maestro, Maxim Vengerov, who will serve as music consultant.

The school left the Villa Nestle in September 2009 and its main premises are now in Coppet, with students living there during the academic year. Summer classes, a feature of the school since it was founded in 1977, continue in Gstaad.

Students at the academy are generally housed by host families and the school is looking for families in the Coppet area with the kind of space and love of strings music that will make it possible for a young musician, finishing his or her musical education, to practice several hours a day (although not every day). Students generally leave for the Christmas and Easter holidays. Telephone,  IMMA secretariat: +$122 364 4494.

ST PREX, SWITZERLAND – First come, first serve, for 8 tickets to the St Prex Classics festival, 16-28 August (two weekends): 4 tickets for 19 August (Soirées Ravel) and 4 tickets for 28 August (Trois pour 4 : Gershwin Piano Quartet). Simply contact tv@stprexfestival.com and include the web address of this page in your request for the tickets. Note that the 28 August event is sold out, so this is a golden opportunity to get a ticket.

The festival, now in its fifth year, features several evenings of world-class entertainment, both dance and music, including a first encounter between star violinist Nigel Kennedy and the Paris Opera’s “etoile”, Aurélie Dupont, the evenings of 25 and 26 August.

Two hours of show-time before the first race shows up, and two minutes later, the pack

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Journalists don’t often have the news come to them, and when it happens on a long  holiday weekend, it’s a special treat! Sunday, late afternoon, the Tour de Suisse bike race went past my house in the mountains, but the party started long before, up and down the mountain road. The neighbours put out flags, invited family and friends and the wine flowed. Cyclists pumped up the hill all day: wannabe racers before the real ones came by.

Banners were hung out, parking on farmers’ fields was negotiated since the road would be closed shortly before the race, police and security guards streaked by at regular intervals.

And then the fun began, as Ferraris, part of the show, rumbled and roared up the hill. Soon after the sponsors came by, pausing just long enough to hand out freebies. Water bottles, flags, caps and bags were collected. The favourites included red gummy-bear style hearts handed out by the Swiss organ donor association and a terrific lemon sorbet on a stick from Frisco (Pacific). No one handed out mini-Ferraris, too bad, and the Clos, Domaines & Chateaux people, for whom this is a big event, weren’t handing out wine bottles, also too bad but probably wise.

Here’s a collection of images from the day (click on images to view larger). For photos of the race itself: GenevaLunch photo album “2011 Tour de Suisse bike race”

Ssprueth Magers Gallery at Basel Art, 15-19 June

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The latest kid on the block to offer information on events in Switzerland is Marcus Berry, who formerly worked for WRG radio in Geneva before it became public radio station WRS, and for Swisster, which closed in December 2010. Berry’s new web site is called Inanyevent and proposes events listings country-wide, funded by advertising.

Berry’s venture joins a mushrooming collection of events listings on English-language sites.

The two most complete were both started nearly five years ago and have grown steadily: the events pages on GenevaLunch and on the AngloInfo site, both of which list regional events for the Lake Geneva area plus Swiss-wide major events of interest to the international population.

Several other sites (see list below), notably Know it All Passports and Leman Events offer a personal selection of what’s on. WRS radio offers a weekly selection and the many business clubs list their own and sometimes other groups’ events.

Relocation agencies and women’s clubs in most cities keep their own events lists and city guides: the quality varies considerably.

Web sites list events as a community service or for commercial reasons because they are “sticky”, with readers returning to a site where they know they can count on finding out what’s on. Returning visitors should hold appeal for advertisers, web business wisdom argues.

Here’s a selection of where to go to find out what’s on, in English, in the Lake Geneva region, but also in the rest of Switzerland. It iincludes only sites that are frequently updated and have a reliable track record, since several sites have started to list events then stopped or they list them erratically.

GenevaLunch volunteer has posted more than 2,500 events!

But first a well-earned word of praise for Laila Rodriguez, who has diligently volunteered for the past three-plus years to put together the GenevaLunch events lists.

Listing what’s on and finding the right balance between an incomplete list or an unwieldy one with some events of very limited appeal is far from an automatic or quick job, as many sites have learned to their dismay.

It takes time and good knowledge of the area covered to filter and get a good mix. Laila finds time every week for this behind-the-scenes unpaid labour of love, providing the international community with a valuable community service.

Next time you check out our events page think of Laila and smile, please, because she’s posted some 2,500 events for you!

Where to find out what’s on, Swiss and Lake Geneva region sites

Official tourism: Most Swiss cities list their own city events in English, useful for an overview (note: GenevaLunch events includes our selections from these) and Geneva-Annecy-Mont Blanc tourism offers events in English from over the border. Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Zurich official pages. One of the best tourism/city guides/what’s on sources of information is the newly re-launched MySwitzerland web site.

Lake Geneva region + main Swiss events, a community service, GenevaLunch events page

Geneva region, business directory + commercial (advertising) featured events, Angloinfo

Personal weekly selection of events in the Lake Geneva region, Know it all Passport

Personal selection plus their own commercial events, Leman Events

Social media: Glocals.com offers a selection of local events posted by its readers, as does the English Forum, and both are Swiss-wide, but Glocals tends to be more active in the Lake Geneva region. The English Forum and its new “local” news site are both run from Sweden and Germany, which limits its value to input from forum members who are in Switzerland.

Mainly for tourists, commercial lists: What’s on When from Frommers

"Unprecedented" abuse case in Switzerland could and should spark debate over tricky balance between surveillance and independence for people in homes

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The final news item for tonight was an unusually tough one to write, the story about a man in Bern admitting to sexually abusing 114 people who live in homes or institutions for the mentally and physically handicapped.

There were two sources and these were unusually straightforward, so the story should have been easy to write. A special investigation unit in Bern held a press conference and the canton then posted a press release, clear and detailed, on its web site.

Handicapped or disabled or dependent persons: a world of PC, jargon and worse

The first hurdle was language, for the minute you talk about the kind of people who live in these homes you run up against a mix of political correctness, jargon, prejudice and cultural language habits. It’s a daunting task for a writer to decide whether to say these are homes or institutions or both, and if there is a difference what is it? And are these people mentally handicapped or disabled or (uh-oh, PC rules have banned this one) retarded? And what if they have physical handicaps but not mental or vice versa? Are nursing homes for the elderly or those who need nursing, as in physical care, assistance? But what to my parents was a nursing home is now a retirement home, or better yet, extended care centre.

I am used to these editorial hurdles, for I have a daughter I am comfortable describing as mentally handicapped and very slightly physically handicapped. She turned 18 last year, officially an adult for the Swiss system, and she moved from a school boarding programme to a residential home. She would be surprised to hear there is a difference. She enjoys the independence and time away from us, in “her” world. She also loves coming home, which she does most weekends.

Which brings me to the next hurdle for this writer: it’s tough to write a story like this when an arctic breeze cuts through you, which  you know doesn’t come from outside. It comes from seeing one of your fears for your child, and these are many, realized.

We have worried for 18 years about her multiple seizures, up to 300 a day for a few years, and about the possibility she would dash out in front of a car or fall off a swing. We worried about side effects from epilepsy medicaton that controlled the seizures. We fretted when she stopped growing, a side effect of the meds.

She loves to swing: it is one of her great joys in life, and to see her ecstatic smile when she sails through the air is enough to make you realize you must not try to protect her from all dangers, or ban everything that might pose a danger.

Every aspect of the life of a child like ours seems fraught with danger, but as with any child, some dangers must be allowed in order not to over-protect, to help the child live more fully.

So our daughter was given a swing, adult-size, for her 16th birthday. She can do this one thing by herself, when she wants, freely. Freedom is rare and a precious thing if you are a dependent person (state jargon).

We worry when she starts to scream because she can’t tell us if it is pain or anger, or frustration because we don’t know the difference. Remember that she is 18. Sometimes it’s simply adolescent angst, and we feel a sense of communion with other parents, or the parents we were to our son, 22, when he was younger.

And that brings me to hormones and the sexual lives of the mentally handicapped, a taboo subject if ever there was one. The only people I discuss this with are parents of other children with similar problems, or the staff at my dauther’s home. A teenager is a teenager, with longings and wants and needs, to greater or lesser degrees, but often without an understanding of these or any way of dealing with them. Worse, if someone imposes themselves sexually on one of our children, they may not understand they are victims, or understand what is happening, or know whether or not to be upset. The abuse may seem more physical than psychological, or it might not.

That doesn’t make it any less of a crime, of an abuse—an infringement on a core aspect of every person.

The man who was arrested in Bern carefully chose his victims, police say, often people who could not speak, for the obvious reason that this would protect him, and it certainly seems to have delayed his crimes catching up with him.

We invested time in teaching a new staff to work with our now-adult daughter. We have had long discussions about not assuming she cannot understand or that what passes for a lack of communication is often lack of careful “listening” to her non-verbal communication.

When we were hunting for a new home for her and visited one that wasn’t suitable, we weren’t sure she understood what the purpose of the visit was. As we looked at the bedroom they offered, which was more like a hospital than a college dorm room, we heard a loud racket. She had raced off to the other end of the hall, which we hadn’t noticed, and started angrily throwing furniture around the lounge area, to everyone’s astonishment. Message: no thanks, don’t want to live here, Mom and Dad.

Anyone who has lived with someone or who has himself or herself suffered a stroke or lost language, even temporarily, for whatever reason will appreciate that one of the greatest difficulties of being non-verbal and unable to use substitutes such as computers or signing or cards is that no one, absolutely no one, truly knows the extent of the handicap, except the person living with it.

Our greatest challenge is to keep listening, to protect the voice that we don’t hear easily but which is there. To do this we must work closely with the people in our daughter’s home. Some are terrific, some mediocre, most in between but they have a tough job and I admire them for doing it. I need to respect them, to have confidence in them and to rest assured my daughter is happy having them care of her.

Another crime this man has committed is to shake the confidence we try and need to have in the care system. What a shame.

There will be some good coming out of this, though, as it forces to the surface conversations that must take place, about how to maintain a balance between a home where people can live securely and one where suspicion and fear force too many rules. Homes then become institutions. A simple example: do you lock bedroom doors at night to keep residents safe from abuse, either from other residents or from staff? Our daughter’s home recently installed inobtrusive movement sensors in all doorways so that if a door is opened at night the staff is immediately alerted.

That would not have stopped a staff member intent on abuse, but it’s a start.

One of the parties to these conversations must be my daughter, and others like her. This will indeed require some rich listening skills.

Switzerland sets a good example for care for the handicapped in general, far better than what I’ve seen in the US or UK or France, and I very much hope it can rise to the occasion to find new ways of ensuring that this crime is not repeated.

The view from Mollens, where Switzerland's latest earthquake hit: the Alps are still standing

An earthquake hit my Valais mountain village Saturday night, making headlines around the world (Western Switzerland hit by earthquake). I wasn’t home at the time, but the most dramatic aspect of the 3.3 Richter scale earthquake appears to have been the 250 phone calls received by police in normally quiet Sierre, on the valley floor, next to the Rhone river. The epicentre was 1 km from my village of Mollens, very close to the resort of Crans-Montana and just next to Aminona, where the three small shakes in a couple hours were also felt.

Switzerland has a history of very occasional earthquakes, so Saturday night’s “explosion”, as locals described the sound, was about on a par with the previous weekend’s New Year’s Eve fireworks, which lasted longer but were predictable. I don’t know anyone who had just made a martini Saturday night, but it sounds like it was the right moment for mixing one, as long as you aren’t James Bond.

This is the speech 11-year-old Daniel Yuval gave in Geneva 29 November 2010 to the international meeting convened to review progress made on the Mine Ban Treaty since the Cartegena Summit in Colombia a year earlier.

Background story

Daniel’s words should set a fine example for politicians, straightforward, clear and to the point. Daniel, a landmine survivor, argues eloquently for the removal of all mines:

Daniel Yuval during a break in Geneva, 29 November 2010

Thank you, everyone, for letting me speak to you today. This is my first trip to Geneva. I am so happy Switzerland invited me to come. Thank you!

I want to tell you my story and ask for your help. We have a big problem in Israel—landmines. Most people in Israel didn’t know about it until this year.

Ten months ago, I went on a picnic with my family to the Golan Heights. It had just snowed, and I had never seen or played in the snow. The place is called Har Avital. My sister Amit and my brother Yoav and I were laughing as we ran into the field to make snowballs. My mom and dad were there, along with many other families.

Suddenly, there was a big “boom”. I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t feel anything at first. I didn’t know there were landmines under the snow, and all around us.

My dad came into the field to pick me up and carry me out. I told him not to worry, I would be okay. And, I told my brother and sister to hold tight to dad’s legs, so they wouldn’t get blown up, too.

Other parents took off their shirts to tie around my leg. Then a helicopter came to fly me and my sister to hospital. Only then I started to know what happened. I had stepped on a landmine.

When I woke up from the operation, the pain in my leg was bad. But, I started to think about something just as bad, that this could happen again to other children.

I spent more than three months in the hospital, and had almost 20 operations, to cut off my right leg below my knee, and to clean and fix my left leg. Many famous people called or visited me in the hospital. When Prime Minister Netanyahu called me, I told him, we have to do something to clean up landmines. I told Mr Netanyahu that no more children should ever get hurt from this weapon.

Jerry White and his friend Dhyan Or came to visit me in the hospital.

Jerry also lost a leg to a landmine in the Golan Heights. I asked them, “How do people get rid of landmines?” They told me that many countries do it. They said, “If we work together, we can try to stop any more people from getting hurt or killed.”

I am now the Youth Ambassador for the Campaign for a Mine-Free Israel. We are asking the government of Israel to pass a new law to clean up old minefields everywhere in Israel and the West Bank. I’m told there over 500,000 mines to get rid of. Some say, one million.

In March and May, I went to the Knesset and told them it was time to take action. I am asking everyone to support this new law. Help us clean up the mess. I believe we can do this by the time I graduate from high school in Israel.

Someone told me we need about 70 million dollars to do this. That is a lot of shekels, that I don’t have! But, I hope that the Israeli Government and others can make this happen. It is worth it, to make sure no more children get killed, or have to spend months in the hospital like I did.

Daniel Yuval, age 11, addresses Geneva followup meeting to Cartagena Summit on implementing the Mine Ban Treaty

Stepping on a landmine is terrible. It’s scary and painful, not just for me, but for my mom and dad, and my whole family. For myself, it was really hard work. I had to learn to walk all over again. But, the good news is, I have learned to run, and can beat some people in my class in the 660 metres. I also take kick-boxing and Judo, and play football.

I want to thank everyone in this room who is committed to getting rid of landmines. We in the Middle East have a big problem. But, we know it can be done. My neighbor Jordan joined the Mine Ban Treaty and is almost finished clearing all its minefields. I hope Israel will be next. I hope soon all the world will be free from landmines.

I thank you for listening to me and hearing my story. I want to thank Roots of Peace for bringing me here, and Mom and Dad for believing I can make a difference. Thank you!

Reuters has produced a story on the quagmire of citizenship for couples who live outside their own countries and whose children may find themselves stateless. If you’re considering having a baby and you don’t live in a country whose passport you have, anywhere in the world, be sure to read this: it’s a sobering story.

And if  you’re considering travelling somewhere interesting to have your baby, or you are travelling to another country close to the time of its birth, be sure to do some research on the implications for your child’s citizenship, before you leave home.

Longtime Geneva resident

Alistair Henley, who lived in the Geneva area for a number of years, working for the IFRC (International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) has died near Kuala Lumpur. He was out walking in the jungle, “doing something he loved”, his family says, when he died suddenly. He is survived by his wife Deborah and three sons, Edmund, Giles and Guy, who attended the International School of Geneva.

Long-time fellow IFRC manager, Bob McKerrow, in May wrote a lengthy tribute to two IFRC men he says says he greatly admires, one of whom was Henley, who had worked for the IFRC since 1981. He includes this background: “He is currently director, Asia Pacific Zone responsible for managing the IFRC’s operations and general activities in the entire Asia Pacific region from the zone office set up in July 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Before that he was head of the East Asia regional delegation based in Beijing from 2003 to 2007. He served as director of the development cooperation department in Geneva from 1995 to 2000 and head of the coordination department from 2000 to 2003.”

His most recent work included IFRC’s aid to Pakistan’s 2010 flood areas.

The family is suggesting that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the IFRC and a memorial site set up by friends provides details.