Winterthur creates specialist unit for extremism and violence prevention

Many countries in Europe, and to a lesser extent Switzerland, are strongly affected by the new phenomenon of jihadist travelers. In this country, the city of Winterthur has also been in the media spotlight a few times. The city council and the various departments of the city administration have been dealing intensively with the problem for about a year and a half. The responsibilities for dealing with it are clearly defined: In the area of security, the main responsibility lies with the canton and the federal government; the city police provide support to the higher-level bodies. In the area of prevention, on the other hand, the city has far greater scope for action. The city has therefore also reviewed its existing, broad-based support and integration program with a view to the new challenges and made targeted adjustments. It goes without saying that no quick and easy answers to the new and complex questions are possible.

Center for Extremism and Violence Prevention

The city council has now decided to create a specialist unit for extremism and violence prevention. It will be a low-threshold point of contact for the population for all questions relating to the topics of radicalization and extremist violence and will take the lead within the city administration in this topic. The office is based on the office for violence prevention of the city of Zurich. It will be located at the Social Services and is limited in time until the end of 2018. The management of the office will be publicly advertised tomorrow, Wednesday.

Continuing education initiative

The efforts and responsibility of the city of Winterthur focus on strengthening its experts at the grassroots level to deal with the problem professionally and to provide them with tools to be able to react adequately in cases of suspicion. As a contribution to this, a total of four half- to full-day workshops on the topic of "Jihadist Radicalization" were recently held. They were aimed at teachers, school social workers, employees of the school psychology service, youth workers, employees from the areas of vocational preparation and work integration as well as addiction prevention.

Around two hundred people took part in the workshops. Among them were also interested parties from cantonal specialized agencies. The workshops were conducted by the Department of Social Work at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW. Last September, it had published the study "Backgrounds of Jihadist Radicalization in Switzerland" with recommendations for prevention and intervention.

Further measures

Last September, an information and training event on the topic of "Radicalization in the school context" took place, which was attended by around one hundred people from the school sector. Within the administration, two working groups are active, which ensure the important networking of experts within the administration and with other expert bodies and can propose measures to the city council.

Last December, City President Michael Künzle met with representatives of all mosque communities in the city of Winterthur for a discussion. It was agreed to strengthen the mutual dialogue. In the coming days, the city will invite to a next meeting, at which concrete steps are to be initiated.

Further measures to strengthen prevention against jihadist radicalization are currently being examined, but are not yet ready for a decision.

Source: City of Winterthur