Calls for hatred and violence based on gender must be punishable. Like the National in December 2023, the Council of States accepted on Wednesday evening, by 21 votes to 18, six parliamentary initiatives from elected officials from all sides (except from the UDC) which asked to extend article 261b of the Penal Code (i.e. the anti-racism law which also includes homophobia) to discrimination made because of belonging to a gender. These acts would be punishable by up to three years in prison.
“Denigrating comments, incitements to hatred directed in particular against women, are increasing in public space, but also digitally. Online violence is exploding and, until now, politics has been powerless to stem it,” noted Mathilde Crevoisier Crelier (PS/JU). “However, if the Penal Code punishes speech and acts of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hostility and homophobia, it is powerless to sanction such acts if they are motivated by sexism, because gender does not is not part of the reasons retained,” she recalled. It is now a matter of sending “a clear signal against this violence”.
The commission did not want this addition. “The offense is already difficult to delineate with regard to comments deemed discriminatory. The introduction of sex as an additional element would aggravate the problem,” stressed Beat Rieder (C/VS). It is indeed not easy to clearly determine whether a joke or a sexist remark is punishable, according to him. Not to mention a possible 3rd gender one day. In addition, the new offense risks leading to a sharp increase in the number of cases, thus overloading the judicial system, he feared. It was not followed.
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