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It is commendable that the issue of care and coercive measures is continually being raised.

Whenever I read reports about past abuses, I always ask myself: Who is looking into this today, in the here and now? Where is injustice taking place today – including at the hands of the state? Who is fighting today for those who have no power?

I am thinking, for example, of children who are forced to live in underground asylum accommodation with their refugee parents (as is the case in the canton of Aargau). Or to toddlers growing up with mothers who are forced to live in isolation or in hiding.

Perhaps in 30 years’ time we will hear their complaints and read their books, because their start in life was so difficult. Precisely when all this is long past and those responsible can no longer be held to account. History seems to be repeating itself – under different circumstances …

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Incomplete legal certainty

Neither democracy nor the liberal constitutional state can prevent injustice from occurring, the vulnerable from being crushed, or minorities from being marginalised. History demonstrates this all too well, and not only in the case of the ‘welfare’ coercive measures and persecution of the Yenish.

Foreseeable apologies

I also believe that in a few decades, when the time is right, the situation of underage refugees or even of offenders ultimately detained for an indefinite period (sentenced under Article 59 of the Criminal Code), who have long since served their sentences, will be the subject of academic research and that the state will apologise to them.

A paradoxical situation

And when will the time be right? When a group can make its voice heard, when it finds enough advocates, when the social and political pressure becomes great enough. It is paradoxical: today, the state apologises to groups to whom it has done wrong, and at the same time it is doing wrong to other groups. Yes, history does sometimes seem to repeat itself. The idea that it is a teacher of life, as the Romans believed (Cicero: ‘Historia magistra vitae’), is hardly ever true.

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Coercive welfare measures

Researchers

Nadine Gautschi

Questions

But who, in the here and now, takes notice when – even on the part of the state – injustice occurs?