Albanian singer Eva Ndoja had only been able to sing for a few minutes when Swiss police entered a restaurant near Zurich and arrested her. This happened in April 2024. According to the Swiss newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” (NZZ), Ndoja is popular with a segment of music fans in the Albanian world in the Balkans and in the diaspora.
Ndoja has over 130,000 followers on social media. The owners of a restaurant in the village of Brüttisellen printed leaflets with the singer’s portrait to announce her concert. Ndoja was arrested because, as the police suspected, she was working in Switzerland without a work permit. She spent a night in custody and the prosecutor’s office issued a sentence against her. This is possible in Switzerland when it comes to minor criminal offenses. Eva Ndoja did not accept the sentence and appeared in court a few days ago in a court near Zurich.
The newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” describes Eva Ndoja’s appearance before the court as follows: “Dressed all in black, with sunglasses on her head and a cloak thrown over her shoulder, Eva Ndoja sits a year and a half after the incident in the courtroom of the District Court in Uster. She does not accept the sentence, according to which she has exercised a profitable activity without a permit. Instead, she has hired a lawyer. She has traveled from Germany, where she lives, for the trial. She speaks calmly and firmly to the judge. She says: ‘I am here to present the case fairly’. And: ‘I demand my rights’.
Although she was singing when the police came in, and although the organizers had used her face on the leaflets, she says: ‘I didn’t work there.’ Some tell a completely different story.”
She says she was just a guest at the bar and after the people there saw her, they asked her to sing a few songs, which Ndoja did, as she herself told. As a witness, she also brought the owner of the club where she had sung. According to “NZZ”, the 43-year-old – a Swiss citizen of Albanian origin – is more than just a club owner. “According to informed sources, she has been working for years as an intermediary for young girls from Southeast Europe. These girls have to bring traffic to the clubs – at the bar, as singers or as animators. They have to wear provocative clothes, dance with male guests, encourage them to drink and buy expensive drinks.”
The owner of the bar is described by the “NZZ” as an important link between club owners and the women she mediates. She also has contacts with club managers who have been tried in previous proceedings. She herself has not been criminally punished. The same pattern is seen in several other investigations by the canton of Zurich into Balkan clubs: young women, lack of work permits, exploitative conditions.
In several police operations, singers from Albanian regions have been arrested for performing without a work permit in Switzerland. Serbian singer Seka Aleksic has also been targeted by the Swiss police. She was also arrested for lack of a work permit. The police also found weapons, ammunition, a pistol with a silencer, rubber bats and a baseball bat in several Balkan bars.
Eva Ndoja told the court that the brief arrest in Switzerland had caused her a lot of trouble. She was banned from entering Switzerland and once the police held her for a long time at the Zurich airport. Before the trial, Ndoja said: “There is murder in our country. And I am going to court for this.”
In the end, 36-year-old Eva Ndoja triumphed. The court declared her completely innocent. The judge said that she had neither engaged in any profitable activity nor had the intention to enter Switzerland to work.
“The situation is unclear, but the state must prove guilt – not the citizen’s innocence.” The owner of the bar also said that Eva Ndoja had not been paid for her performance. The singer received damages for the legal process and moral compensation – about 6,000 francs in total. After the announcement of the verdict, she left the court. When Ndoja and the lawyer got into the car, she said one more thing: “I deserved innocence. Believe me.”
