Swiss police believe that there should be limits when it is about carnival and ideas for the costumes. Ku Klux Klan hooded figures carrying burning torches along a street of Brunnen looked disgusting and violated the Swiss laws, said local police and started the investigation.
Swiss annual carnival celebrations have perplexed the police with ideas of costumes, especially after a scandalous video emerged of people wearing hooded costumes was uploaded to the internet. Those white costumes were resembling those worn by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, and that fact worried a lot the Brunnen population and the local police.
The passer-by who captured the video said he was shocked. That is definitely taking it too far, the police agreed and started the investigation. However, the lawyers say it would be difficult to establish members of the group had been guilty of racial discrimination in the Brunnen case.
This was because no specific race or ethnicity had been directly and demonstrably targeted by the group and because their appearance had come during the context of carnival celebrations when there is a relatively high tolerance for satire.
Racism expert and the lawyer Mr Kettiger said the case would be very different if the group had marched past an asylum home where most of the residents were black. “That would be violation of anti-racism laws and punishable by law,” he said.
