Activist files slavery complaint against three Swiss cantons

US activist Shelley Moorhead filed a criminal complaint with Switzerland’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office at the beginning of September against the cantons of Zurich, Bern and Solothurn, SRF reported. He alleges that the cantons invested in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade between 1719 and 1839.

Moorhead is seeking a criminal investigation and a fine of 5 million Swiss francs for each canton. He is also demanding compensation and damages for himself.

Historical investments

The complaint is based on a report by historian Hans Fässler. It says Zurich invested in the British South Sea Company and, through the state interest commission Leu & Co., in Danish and Swedish colonial and trading structures.

Bern was one of the South Sea Company’s largest shareholders and invested extensively in Danish government bonds that, according to the complaint, were linked to the colonial economy. Solothurn invested in the French Mississippi Company, which was involved in the colonial economic and slavery system.

The complaint considers these forms of financing to have aided enslavement, which would today qualify as a crime against humanity.

Claim to be a victim

Moorhead is a descendant of people enslaved in the Danish West Indies. He argues that the consequences of slavery continue today because the descendants of enslaved people have, on average, less income and wealth after their ancestors were denied the opportunity to build and pass on prosperity over generations.

The present-day US Virgin Islands were Danish colonies until 1917. Moorhead is also taking action against Denmark, but says the slavery on his island cannot be separated from Switzerland.

“The cantons’ involvement in Danish slavery profits immediately stood out to us,” he said, according to SRF.

Low prospects for prosecution

After European colonisation of the Americas, a large-scale system of slave trading developed from the 16th century onwards. African and Arab traders abducted millions of people and brought them to ports in West Africa, where European merchants bought them and transported them by ship to the Americas. Plantation owners forced them to work without pay, primarily on sugar and later cotton plantations.

Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and France followed in 1815. Slavery itself was abolished later: the United States ended it in 1865 and Brazil in 1888. Swiss families and companies also profited from the trade, although the main powers dominating it were European colonial states such as Britain and France.

Fässler argues that the crime against humanity represented by slavery formed part of customary international law and was therefore not subject to a statute of limitations. He said there had been warnings as early as the 17th century that slavery was a crime and that enslaved people should be freed and compensated. The cantons’ profits are difficult to calculate, he said, but amounted to millions.

Despite the historical evidence that the cantons profited from the transatlantic slave trade, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is unlikely to open an investigation, SRF reported. The alleged perpetrators are dead, and authorities do not investigate dead people.