Behind the scenes: how impactful is Switzerland’s support for political prisoners?

Natallia Hersche, a Swiss-Belarus dual citizen visiting Minsk on vacation, was detained on September 19, 2020, for participating in an unauthorised protest and harming a police officer.

She was accused of causing injury while pulling off the policeman’s balaclava and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. In total she spent 17 months behind bars and was released on February 18, 2022.

Hersche has denied the charges. Belarusian human rights groups recognised her as a political prisoner. During her time in detention, Switzerland’s foreign ministryExternal link was in close contact with Hersche and her family to secure her release.

 “Switzerland was able to grant Natallia Hersche consular assistance, even though this is not guaranteed for dual citizens. Representatives of the Swiss embassy in Minsk were able to visit her on several occasions in prison,” the ministry said.

Consular assistance is normally restricted to non-dual Swiss citizens. In February 2022, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who held the rotating Swiss presidency position at the time, announced her release in a post on social media platform X:”I am glad that Switzerland’s diplomatic efforts have paid off.”

Supporting political prisoners

Pushing for the release of political prisoners, both Swiss and non-Swiss, is part of Switzerland’s regular consular services and more broadly of its political mandate of promoting democracy abroad.   

Switzerland is proactive in supporting political prisoners in authoritarian countries such as Russia and China. This takes the form of publishing official political statements, visits to prisons, or meetings with dissidents.

In the case of Hersche, the Swiss consulate organised her transfer directly from the prison to the airport, where she boarded a flight to Switzerland.

“Switzerland does not participate in conflicts by military means. However, it consistently opposes violators of international law through political and economic means,” says Thomas Borer, former Swiss ambassador to Germany who now runs a consultancy in public affairs.

Switzerland also organises bilateral human rights dialogues with countries like China and Iran, where they address human rights abuses.

These are eased by the presence of Switzerland’s multilateral relations hub in Geneva home to UN institutions and international NGOs. As an example, Switzerland maintained a human rights dialogue with IranExternal link during the height of the 2022 protests against the regime. At the time, Switzerland supported NGOs working with Iranian detainees, including women arrested for defying compulsory hijab laws.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is headquartered in Geneva. It often operates as an intermediary between conflicting parties to facilitate the release or exchange of prisoners of war, detainees, and hostages.

It is also in Geneva that Switzerland launched an independent mechanism External linkto investigate the fate of missing persons in Syria, many of whom are political prisoners held by the former Bashar al- Assad regime. Switzerland also periodically provides voluntary contributions to UN bodies investigating human rights violations.

While most Western democracies also publicly support political prisoners, Switzerland stands out for its extensive network of diplomatic missions abroad. Its neutrality positions it as a partner of trust for opposing parties.

Switzerland has a total of 141 diplomatic missions around the world, 34 of which are in authoritarian countries. Overall, for a small country, Switzerland maintains an extensive diplomatic presence abroad — ranking 19th globally in absolute numbers.

As a regular host of international peace conferences, it also facilitates backdoor meetings between civil society and NGOs. This was the case in last year, when Swiss diplomats and the United States co-organised peace talks on Sudan near Geneva after 16 months of civil war. Through this process, diplomats created a confidential platform for opposition and civil society, including those persecuted, to engage in informal dialogue with conflicting parties.  

It also has the possibility of serving as a protecting power, meaning that it represents a country abroad that does not have its own formal diplomatic representations.

This status provides Switzerland with a unique communication channel to governments and the ability to indirectly convey concerns about human rights violations, including the arrests of opposition figures.

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Efficiency questioned

As authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia have gained global clout in international institutions, the efficacy of this diplomacy and its impact is being questioned by NGOs. They argue that countries like Switzerland could be more openly vocal in supporting human rights.

Tens of thousands of political prisoners are reported in over 70 countries worldwide — a stark reminder that authoritarian repression is not a relic of the past, but a growing global reality. Some of the discussions about their detention and release are now conducted behind closed doors at the request of authoritarian leaders keen to keep their abuses out of the public eye. Switzerland’s neutrality means it cannot openly take sides and is often viewed as less vocal on certain topics compared to other western democracies.

Following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison in February 2024, the Swiss government reacted with measured restraint expressing “concern” rather than a formal condemnation (see tweet from Swiss foreign ministry below in French).

This measured response sparked domestic criticism but was seen by some experts at the time as a way to preserve Switzerland’s role as a potential mediator for peace between Russia and Ukraine.

“Switzerland is seldom in a position to provoke. Ultimately, the only way to bring about a change in behaviour in regimes that violate human rights is for the international community to exert sustained political, media, and, above all, economic pressure over many years,” Borer says.

In 2023 Switzerland restarted its human rights dialogue with China which had been suspended in 2019 after Beijing objected against Swiss support for a UN demand for the closure of internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region. The dialogue excluded the participation of NGOs at the request of China.

NGOs at the time warned that China’s attempt to position itself as a positive actor in human rights was only “window dressing”.

Swiss left-leaning parties have long criticised the country’s human rights dialogue with China as a strategic initiative to advance Switzerland’s economic trade interests.

In February 2025, the bilateral human rights dialogue between Switzerland and ChinaExternal link was held once again in a confidential setting. It addressed “arrests of Uyghurs, freedom of religion and expression, women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as the situation in Tibet and Hong Kong”. No NGOs were present and no joint declaration was published.

“The case of China, where Swiss and other diplomats routinely raise human rights concerns behind closed doors, offers a revealing test. Discreet dialogue can lead to small gains, an individual’s release here, an NGO’s access there. But we must not delude ourselves: the structural repression remains intact. Measured against the scale of the abuse, quiet diplomacy delivers symbolic consolation, not systemic change,” Borer says.

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Small steps can help

Though backdoor diplomacy or meetings with a dissident don’t often lead to concrete results, it doesn’t mean these gestures are merely symbolic.

“Visible gestures convey a powerful public message and can raise international awareness. Switzerland’s more subdued approach (…) often maintains the potential for continued engagement and gradual progress,” adds Borer.

A Swiss foreign ministry spokesperson told Swissinfo that Switzerland remains involved in promoting human rights, consistently advocating for freedom of expression and accountability for abuses. “Switzerland and the Swiss embassy in Belarus have called for the unconditional release of all arbitrarily detained persons,” the spokesperson said with regard to its diplomacy in Belarus.

Switzerland and Belarus are not currently engaged in a human rights dialogue, however the human rights situation in Belarus is regularly addressed by Switzerland in bilateral exchanges and multilateral forums, the ministry said. In the case of Hersche, the pressure by the Swiss consul led to a reduced prison sentence. Hersche recalls at the time that the Swiss government was “a source of spiritual support”.

“[Then] ambassador [Claude] Almeriatt visited me regularly from the very beginning of my detention — during the investigation, every two weeks, and after the trial, once a month. He was my main source of information about what was happening on the other side of the fence,” she notes.

Russia has no less than 1,600 political prisoners, according to two databases of OVD-Info, an independent human rights defence and media group, and Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation.

Switzerland maintains close contacts with some of these groups despite tensions its raises with Moscow. This includes informal diplomatic meetings such as invitations to lunch or meetings at international conferences. One of these human rights advocates is Russian opposition politician and Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, who met with the Swiss ambassador just days before his arrest in Moscow in April 2022.

“During lunch, we discussed that I hadn’t worked much with Switzerland before. That’s when Madame Ambassador invited me to come to Bern, to meet with the leadership of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the European agenda, human rights, and, of course, bilateral relations,” Kara-Murza recalls.

Kara-Murza was released in August last year. In February he attended the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy to request that the release of all prisoners of war and abducted Ukrainian children be part of any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.  

When asked if a country like Switzerland was doing enough for political prisoners and the promotion of human rights in general, Dmitry Muratov, former editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper Novaya GazetaExternal link and Nobel peace prize winner, said the country could better leverage its Geneva hub. “Switzerland could facilitate prisoner exchanges and mutual amnesties for political detainees, involving the missions of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Switzerland.”

Edited by Virginie Mangin/ac

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