In Locarno a banner carrying sixty thousand names from Gaza

A sixty-metre banner carrying more than sixty thousand names of victims from Gaza will be displayed in Locarno on Saturday evening. The action will take place in Largo Franco Zorzi from 7pm.

The initiative is organised by three groups. Gruppo 24 Maggio, already behind the red postcard campaign during last year's edition of the Film Festival. SHWAG, short for Swiss Healthcare Workers Against Genocide. And Volontari·e Ticinesi per la Palestina, who in September organised the doctors' hunger strike on Federal Square.

According to the organisers, the aim is to give an identity to the victims, overwhelmingly civilians, of what they describe as one of the gravest violations of international law of our time.

The requests to the Federal Council

The groups put three demands to the Swiss government.

The first is to require Israel to open the Gaza crossings for humanitarian aid and for access by independent media.

The second is to organise treatment in Switzerland for injured and sick civilians from Gaza, with particular attention to women and children.

The third is to impose sanctions on Israeli officials and entities, should violations of international humanitarian law continue.

In their statement the organisers also criticise news coverage. They argue that part of the Swiss media has given limited space to an exceptional humanitarian and legal tragedy, and that complete information is necessary for an informed public debate.

The list of names is the form chosen to make visible a figure that usually appears as an aggregate. It shifts attention from the statistics to individual people, and was preferred to a demonstration with speeches from a stage.