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Protesters erect symbolic minarets to protest against the results of a vote in Switzerland at the Helvetiaplatz square in Zurich - Source: Reuters -
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The top UN rights official said Switzerland's ban on building minarets was deeply divisive and at odds with its international legal obligations.
Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement that prohibiting an architectural structure linked to Islam or any religion was "clearly discriminatory".
Swiss voters adopted the ban in a referendum on Sunday, defying the government and parliament which had rejected the right-wing initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and a cherished tradition of tolerance.
Pillay said the ban was "discriminatory, deeply divisive and a thoroughly unfortunate step for Switzerland to take, and risks putting the country on a collision course with its international human rights obligations".
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, speaking in Athens, said the ban brought new risks for Swiss security.
"We are concerned by this vote ... Every blow to the coexistence of different cultures and religions also endangers our security, because provocation risks sparking other provocations," she told a ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Switzerland, a country of 7.7 million, is home to more than 300,000 Muslims, mainly from Bosnia, Kosovo and Turkey.
In French-speaking western Switzerland, home to almost the only cantons (states) to vote against the initiative, critics of the ban held candlelight protest marches on Tuesday night.
In Lausanne, up to 5,000 people took part, marching from the hilltop cathedral to the city's mosque, the Swiss news agency ATS reported. "No to discrimination," read one of their signs.
In Geneva, about 2,000 people erected wooden minarets in front of the cathedral where Protestant Jean Calvin preached in the 1500s. "We are all Muslims," read one sign.
The UN Human Rights Committee said last month the ban would bring Switzerland into non-compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"If the ban is implemented, it is a violation," Nigel Rodley, a committee member, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Concerns
The Council of Europe said on Monday the ban raised concerns over whether fundamental rights, protected by international treaties, should be the subject of popular votes.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, speaking on Tuesday to his Islamist-rooted AK Party's lawmakers in parliament, said: "These are inherent rights that cannot be put to referendums."
Earlier, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it expected Switzerland to take steps to correct the situation.
Moroccan daily newspaper Le Soir said: "They call it democracy. No, it's more like institutionalised racism."
A group of politicians from the SVP, the country's biggest party, and the conservative Federal Democratic Union gathered enough signatures to force the referendum.
Its campaign poster showed the Swiss flag covered in missile-like minarets and the portrait of a woman covered with a black chador and veil associated with strict Islam.
Switzerland's biggest-selling daily newspaper Blick defended the vote, saying the ban does not reject religious freedom and immigrants needed to make more of an effort to integrate.
"We should not be ashamed of ourselves!" Blick's front page headline said on Tuesday.
