Swiss MP Jonas Fricker of the Green Party (Verts/AG) shocked fellow legislators in a debate on fair trade on Thursday by comparing the transportation of pigs to the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.
Fricker said the comparison had been brought to mind by his recent viewing of a documentary on pig transportation.
“The deportees had only a slight chance to survive,” he told MPs. “As for the pigs, they were condemned to certain death.”
Fricker later apologised during the same debate for the comparison saying it had been as a result of his “naïveté”.
Fricker’s comments were condemned on social media by former Green MP Josef Lang, who described them as “a serious attack on humanist principles”.
A similar reaction came in an official reaction by the Green Party in a statement. The Greens noted that Fricker had immediately and unreservedly apologised to parliament and to representatives of the Swiss Jewish community.
