savage Swiss racists attack black man with chainsaws

[NorthernSpy]

Recently at DU, there was much fretting when Swiss leftists rioted against the far-right Swiss People's Party.


Here is one of the incidents that inspired them to act:

ZURICH -- At 1:30 a.m., Antonio da Costa heard a knock at the back entrance of the McDonald's restaurant where he worked as a janitor after-hours.

He opened the door, he recalled in an interview. There stood two men, each gripping a chain saw. One yanked the cord on his saw, stepped toward da Costa and shouted above the roaring machine: "We don't need Africans in our country. We're here to kill you!"

The two masked assailants cornered da Costa and began raking him with the whirring chain-saw blades. They slashed one arm to the bone, nearly sliced off his left thumb and hacked his face, neck and chest, the 37-year-old Angolan said, his voice quavering as he recounted the May 1 attack.

Fucking nazi savages!

"I couldn't defend myself against two chain saws," he said. As they slashed at him with the buzzing blades, da Costa said, he tried in vain to protect his face with his arms. "I couldn't feel my fingers. I was on my knees. I tried to tell them I didn't want trouble, I just came here to work. They were treating me like I was an animal.

"One put the chain saw on top of my head and said, 'We're going to cut you in half.' "

He closed his eyes at the memory. "I tried to hide my eyes. I didn't want to see the way they were going to kill me," he continued, in French. "I was praying. In my head I'd already died. I'd lost all hope of living.

"Then it was a miracle. He saved me," da Costa said, referring to God. "I found the courage inside. I got up and pushed open the door with my chest because I couldn't use my arms, and ran." He fell, breaking his teeth; the men stood over him and tried to restart the saws, but could not, he said. He sprang up and jumped a fence, eluding them.

That night he underwent six hours of surgery to stitch the cuts on his face, chest and arms and reattach his left thumb. Five months after the attack, half of his face is slathered in a white salve, his left arm remains in a red cast, 16 purple slashes are outlined on his right arm and damaged teeth continue to fall out.

"My own children are afraid of me -- my own children," said da Costa, his eyes welling with tears. "They want to know, 'Why did somebody cut up my daddy?' "

When the far-right Swiss People's Party was asked about the attack on DaCosta, their spokesman would only say this:

"Sometimes a mistake can happen. I don't say all Swiss men and women are the most ideal human beings in the world."

You heard the man: it was a mistake. Sometimes you get carried away and cut up a kaffir with a chainsaw -- nobody's perfect, not even us. But gawd forbid those lefties break the friggin china. That's just wrong.


:eyes:


If it came down to an either-or, I'd rather be soft on antiracist rioters, than soft on neo-nazis.

[Maestro]

1. Absolutely disgusting!

How anyone could do this to another human being is beyond me. It makes me want to rethink my anti-death penalty feelings. :mad:

[malaise]

2. People on this planet have gone stark raving mad

They should be jailed for life.

[frogcycle]

3. gotta love those peace-loving Swiss

[cali]

4. Beyond appalling and scary as hell.

That poor, poor man. He'll have so much hell to live through in the coming years. This just make me shake with anger.

[NightWatcher]

5. time to outlaw chainsaws

we must outlaw everything that is used to hurt people instead of punishing those who do the hurt.

[lonestarnot]

7. National Chainsaw Association will have something to say about this Buster!

heh.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. If and when chainsaw attacks are killing thousands of people a year,

then maybe tighter restrictions on chainsaw ownership and use will be a good idea.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Death squads (euphemistically termed "paramilitaries") have used them liberally in Colombia.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Colombia+death+squads+chainsaws&spell=1

Very, very, very sad even one person in this world would entertain the idea, even if only in passing.

[Chulanowa]

15. That shit's the only thing you can think of to say? Really?

Well congratulations, bud. You've taken a man tortured with motherfucking chainsaws, and tried to turn it into a farce. 'Cause if there's something that strikes you as funny, well, it must be some guy being mangled by Nazis.

[knitter4democracy]

6. Oh. My. God. What a horrific thing for that poor man.

He'll never be the same. :cry:

What the hell is wrong with those men? They need to be locked up for life away from anyone they could hurt and slowly humanized again so they see the pain in others as well as in themselves.

[kurth]

8. Bringing back the "worst times in Europe between 1930 and 1938"

"These campaigns remind me of the worst times in Europe between 1930 and 1938," said Yves Patrick Delachaux, a Geneva police officer and author who has made a career of combating racism in his police department. "The same types of posters were used to encourage people to kick the Jews out. We have to be very careful with such propaganda."

Switzerland's Federal Commission Against Racism warned in a report last month that racial discrimination has become institutionalized in government agencies and that the centuries-old Swiss tradition of community decision-making has been corrupted by xenophobia.

In Switzerland, each local community determines who among its immigrants will be granted citizenship. In many towns and villages, public votes are taken among citizens.

The Commission Against Racism said those decisions "sometimes take the shape of a refusal with discriminatory and even racist overtones." The commission said most people denied citizenship were Muslims and natives of the Balkans who were granted asylum during the ethnic wars of the 1990s.

[Judi Lynn]

11. The Swiss People's Party spokesman says ""Sometimes a mistake can happen."

I'm sure he was referring to the reality that for some unforeseen reason, the victim found his way to a miracle and escaped, and they couldn't restart their chainsaws in time to continue killing him.

This poor, poor, poor man, and his poor, poor family. He may very well never have the ability to sleep peacefully again in his entire life.

He and his loved ones will be grieving about this visit from hell forever. I hope time will find a way to restore what has been taken from them in peace of mind, and hope.

Who really can be sick enough to believe he/she is truly better than others due to his skin color, and social advantages? Life will deal with these people in its own fashion, one way or another.

I wish anyone knew of a way people could simply send their names to show support to this man and his family in their time of need.

[rasputin1952]

12. This is indeed a horrific story...there are times when I have

to wonder if miracles do happen..."they could not restart their chainsaws"...O8)

Perhaps the saws had more conscience than these animals.

[reggie the dog]

13. I would welcome

this guy to France if he could have the papers to live here. He already speaks French, that is an advantage over here. He would probably have no trouble getting the same kind of work and the health care/social services are better here than in Switzerland.

[Laughing Mirror]

14. Picture of Antonio da Costa here

http://pictopia.com/perl/gal?process=gallery&gallery_id=4528&provider_id=25&ptp_photo_id=xt-mt-25-191558

I couldn't find anything on this in the French press. But then, France is preoccupied with its own trickle-down xenophobia, fear of the dark people. That's how its current president got elected.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Oh, sad...... If he hadn't kept fighting, they would have had him.

I hope McDonald's, his employer, will do the right thing here, and help him get ALL the treatment and rehabilitation he will need.

Hope he can find peace of mind sometime. Hope his attackers can't.

[Swamp Rat]

16. Jesus!

:cry:

[Cronopio]

18. "I don't say all Swiss men and women are the most ideal human beings in the world."

Neither would the jihadists who might show up *his* doorstep one night, with very long and sharp knives and a lot of blind rage. Not the most ideal human beings, by a long shot.

It still amazes me that people still start these kinds of games after all this time, but they do. Sometimes all you can do is speak out against it, but that's better than buying into it.