Friday, 9 August 2013

Shop attendant gives Oprah Winfrey a ''racist treatment'' in Switzerland.

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has said she was racially attacked during a visit to Switzerland.
The BBC reports that she said an assistant refused to serve her in an upmarket handbag shop in Zurich.
Winfrey, one of the world’s richest women, was apparently told the bags on display were “too expensive” for her.
Her claims, made to a US television programme, come amid a political row over plans by some Swiss towns to ban asylum-seekers from some public places.
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Berne says human rights groups have likened the plans – which include banning asylum-seekers from swimming pools, playing fields and libraries – to apartheid.
Winfrey, who stars in Lee Daniels’ new film The Butler, visited Zurich last month to attend singer Tina Turner’s wedding. The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Switzerland.
Winfrey said she left the shop calmly without arguing, but that the experience was proof that racism continues to be a problem.
“There’s two different ways to handle it,” she said.
“I could’ve had the whole blow-up thing… but it still exists, of course it does.”
Her claims are a public relations disaster for Switzerland.
About 48,000 people are currently seeking asylum in Switzerland. It has twice as many asylum seekers as the European average.
Officials say the curbs, which will also see asylum-seekers housed in special centres, are aimed at preventing tensions with residents.
The country’s asylum laws were tightened in June.

4 comments:

  1. Hear ye,hear ye...apartheid is yet to be stamped out. Let's stop kidding ourselves.

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  2. This is shocking.

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  3. This is crazy! In this day and age.

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  4. dear oprah,
    why didnt you go to BREMGARTEN, switzerland, and ask for access to the public swimming pool?
    that would have been a really good idea..

    by the way, i'd gladly sponsor you a ticket to the swimming pool.

    best regards,

    verena r., switzerland

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