Anna-Lena

Reawakening of the 30th of November in Lund

2008-11-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

In recent years there has been calm in Lund on November 30, Karl XII’s death-day. Which many surely have been grateful for, remembering the annual riots on this date in the early 1990s. But now the Free Nationalists of Scania are planning to shake life into the celebration again. I note that the Liberal Nationalists had invited Marc Abramsson, leader of the National Democrats, as a speaker at the meeting launching the event.

The National Democrats take another step closer to the national movement, says Robert Boström, a Sweden Democrat in Örebro, on his blog. ND has also been a longtime participant in the annual Salem Demonstration alongside, among others, “Info14” and the Swedish Resistance Movement. Now all that is missing is that they also turn up at the People’s March in conjunction with the National Day, writes Boström. Free Nationalists Scania is part of the nationwide network of Free Nationalists. The Skåne branch of this network was formed in early November (see ‘Info 14’). (Unfortunately all the links are in Swedish).

The November 30 celebration this year is supposed to be the biggest since the early 1990’s when the tradition petered out much because of the fracas with Danish BZ and other activists who sabotaged the parades. The return to tradition was apparently supposed to be accompanied by Lars Hulthén, an old celebrity in this context who used to waltz around in the media in his capacity of chairman for 30 November Association of Lund. Despite repeated questions, Hulthén could never point out any single major characteristic of Karl XII, except that he lived in Lund, which he happened to do during the short span of years 1715-1718, which may not be the first thing people think of when they hear of Karl XII.

There are a lot of things you can say about Karl XII. Something I never understood is why nationalists celebrate the ruler responsible for the collapse of the giant Swedish empire. On the other hand, celebrating the fact of his death — does anyone even know when his birthday was?

More about 30 november in Lund (unfortunately all in Swedish, another celebration will be in Stockholm): Sydsvenskan 1, Sydsvenskan 2, Lundabor mot rasism, Karl XII and 30 of November through the years Sydsvenskan 2004 and Wikipedia

Some information in English and translations of some of the other sources at Gates of Vienna.

New book about migrant workers

2008-09-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Last year I met Jozef och Elvira, two migrant workers from Poland and Slovakia that was employed every summer for ten years in a farm in southern Sweden with agricultural work. They told me about long work hours (from six in the morning until 8 sometimes 10 or 12 at night) and work conditions that few Swedes would cope with. They also told about how the farmer himself harassed them and called them “my niggers” and “my pigs” when they got back from work full of dust. Which in fact happened all the time as they didn’t have a shower they could use at work, in fact they didn’t even have a toilet or a room where they could have their meals. Instead they were sitting directly on the ground or on a lorry trail.

There are approximately 200 million migrant workers in the world. Not more than 9 per cent are refugees, the rest of them are simply trying to get a better life. They are often working for less money and with worse working conditions than the majority population. The third world has moved in to Sweden and other European countries, a cucumber grown in southern Sweden leads to almost the same kind of exploitation as vegetables grown in countries in the third world. Sweden is full of construction workers, cleaning ladies, taxi drivers and others with an origin in another country that are doing work no native would even think of accepting.

My new book, written together with Mats Wingborg, deals with Migrant workers and their rights ("Migrantarbetare - grundkurs om rörlighet, rättigheter och globalisering", the editor is Premiss förlag and we were doing it for the Olof Palme International Centre with Support of the Decent Work Campaign (Solidar). We have studied the whole situation with migrant workers in Sweden and the rest of the world, not only those without documentation. We are particularly looking at what effect migration has on what usually called “the Swedish Model”. (Photo from southern Sweden, outside Kristianstad, by Anna-Lena Lodenius)

Forced abortion after seven months pregnancy

2008-08-20T11:02:00.001-07:00

This week I met a women from Gothenburg that grew up the very same period as me. She had a brother, just as me. I got another brother a few years later. But when her mother got pregnant she was forced to an abortion when she was already in the 7th month of pregnancy. The social secretary also told her that she had to be sterilized if she wanted to keep the other two children. She was but 22 years old then. Two families in Sweden during late fifties, early sixties. So similar, and still so big differences.

The only crime her mother was accused with was that she was a traveller. A invisible group in the society, sometimes associated with the Roma group, sometimes not. They speak a Roma language and share some of the culture. Still they are not showing identity in any particular way. Forced sterilisations on certain groups, e g travellers, were done until the beginning of the 70ties. Nobody know how many victims there are, many that suffered are ashamed to talk about it.

The last couple of days I have been moderating a conference about the Roma and Travellers group that was arranged by the Swedish governments delegation for Roma and Travellers issues. The chairman Maria Leissner from the Liberal party and the minister responsible for discrimination and gender equality Nyamko Sabuni both participated.

Today we spoke a lot about what is happening in Italy with the Roma group, (I wrote about in on my Swedish blog). It reminds a lot of what happened to the Jews.

Romans has been in Sweden for more than 500 years. They were also victims of the Holocaust, possibly half a million was killed by the Nazi regime for racial reasons. Only two Roma women were allowed to get in to the white busses that rescued so many Jews, and that was only because they thought they were Jews. We should feelt guilt and shame for this, But very few even know about it.

But there are also certain positive developments that need to be mentioned. More Romans today are trying to organize themselves and are fighting for their rights in various ways. As Soraya Post, the name of the woman I mentioned that lost her second brother. She sits in the board of European Roma and Travellers Forum and is chairman of International Roma Women’s Network.

Soraya Posts mother was encouraged to start a juridical process that in the end was quite successful. Her case made other men and women that were forced to sterilization to also raise up and claim their right.

Parvin Ardalan received the Olof Palme-prize

2008-03-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

This year the Iranian women-activist Parvin Ardalan received the Olof Palme-prize. The ceremoni was held on last Thursday in Stockholm. Unfortunately Parvin Ardalan was not able to attend as she was not allowed to leave the country. She started her journey a few days earlier and were allowed to get on the plane. But then they told her that she had to leave, otherwise they were not going to let the other passengers go. Instead her sister Shirin (in the picture next to former UN-ambassadour Pierre Schori, the chairman of the Olof Palme Memorial Foundation) went to Stockholm to receive the prize. Parvin Ardalan addressed the audience in a film and told about the situation for wormen in Iran.

During the debate that followed the prize-ceremony the Swedish journalist Arne Ruth said that the situation for women in Iran can be compared with the apartheidsystem in South Africa. He was wondering weather the lack of interest from many organizations and activists around the world had something to do with that it is women that are suffering from injustice, violence and discrimination. He also blamed the Swedish womens movement for not taking part in the event.

I've been a member of the board of The Olof Palme Foundation since 1995 and I am sure that Olof Palme would have been very satisfied with this years winner. She is a brave and proud women that are able to give at least some hope for a change in the future.

Very few members in political parties youth organisations

2008-01-24T02:12:00.000-08:00

New figures shows that very few are members in the political parties youth organisations. They were earlier accused of exaggerating the amount of members in order to get more money from the authorities. This was proved for some of the organisations, the young leftists in particular (this year they haven't applies for any money at all).

Social Democratic Youth, SSU, used to claim 40 000 members in the 80ies. By far the biggest political youth organisation in Sweden then. Still 2003 they said they had moer than 19 000 members. This year they can only prove they have 1 233 members. In addition to that they say they have some members that are not connected to a district, which means they can not be counted for money from the national Board of Youth Issues. If one count even those individual members there are still not more than 2 819 members in SSU.

The biggest political youth organisation is connected to the right wing party “moderata samlingspartiet”. There are 1 000 members less than 2003, but still 6 605 members. Second biggest are the youths connected to the Christian Democrats, they have 3 806 members.

The youth organisations are considered to be the future of political life; if they gather so little interested one has to think if this also shows a problem for the political systems as such. Is it possible to shape political elite out of so little people? And what happens to the ideological discussions within the parties when they get so little influences from vital youth groups that works within the system?

Sources (unfortunately all in Swedish):
Ungdomsstyrelsen
Dagens Nyheter
Social Democratic Youth

Big Nazi-parade in Salem

2007-12-16T03:15:00.000-08:00

1 000 nationalists participated in the parade that is part of the annual manifestation in the beginning of December in Salem south of Stockholm. As usual there were a protest manifestation with antiracists held at the same time. As usual there were also a lot of tension and violence between the groups. The police took 144 people, 38 of those belonged to the antiracists.

500 polices tried to secure the event, the event costed 6 million Swedish crowns (9 crowns is one Euro). One could say the freedom of speach is worth a lot more than that. But then one should also consider how such manifestations are affecting ordinary citizens. It's more or less a curfew one day each year, this year the staff working with service for elderly people could not get to their houses for security reasons. Next year the police will offer them protection, they already told.

As usual the organizers claim no responsibility. In the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet there is a comment from Daniel Viklund from the Network Against Racism (the article is not to be found at the Internet).
"It is not our responsibility to judge what other people do and why they are so furious. But I can say that they have the right to be furious."

Salem-manifestation is held because of a tragic murder of a young person a couple of years ago. Nazi-groups immediately started to use the event as an example of the multicultural violence towards Swedish citizens, the killed boy had a lose connection to skinheads but was not an ideologically devoted person. The picture shows a banner from the event.

Left wing extremists often have middle class background

2007-11-30T03:37:00.000-08:00

Yester-day the Swedish Magazine Fokus published a long article about both leftwing and rightwing extremism. The conclusion is that they are no longer only fighting each others, there are some new targets. For the left particularly politicians from right wing parties and authorities, mainly staff that are handling employment and migration issues. They also point to the fact that both left and right consists of small independent groups taking action without asking any leaders and often towards local targets. The article describes a situation that I can recognize from my own writings (mainly from the book “Gatans parlament”, 2006).

One interesting thing with the article in Fokus is that they have investigated Swedish courts in order to get a picture of how these often very young criminals are described in the police reports. It might not come as a surprise but left wing extremists are generally described as middle class well educated people and right wing extremists more as “white trash” (social problems, drinking, drugs, former criminality etc).

They made an interview with me last night in Channel 4, unfortunately it’s in Swedish, just as the article in Fokus. The picture shows a demonstration in the central of Stockholm January 2006, I’m the photographer.

Young Nazis killed handicapped man

2007-11-03T04:27:00.000-07:00

The trial against 3 boys 15-16 year old, accused for killing a physically handicapped man, has finished. The court could prove that at least 2 of them committed the murder.

The case has attracted a lot of interest partly because the cruelty shown towards the 55 year old man, partly because one or possible two of the boys are members of a Nazi organisation (National Socialist Front, NSF). In the beginning it was suggested that the motive was linked to the fact that Nazis generally consider handicapped people as racially deprived. Still, such cases have been rare in pre-war time as I write in my book “Vit makt och blågula drömmar” (White Power and Blue and Yellow Dreams).

But quite soon it was found out there were certain other circumstances in this case. The strongest motive is probably that the boys were accusing the man of delivering alcohol to a mother with severe problems with drinking. They both are said to have a diagnosis of being slightly autistic.

Still they might have been attracted to the idea of consider their victims as symbols in a war against society rather than human beings. This is not the first case with more or less disturbed and socially deprived young boys being attracted to this kind of ideologies. Or maybe one could rather say they were attracted to the image of neo-Nazism. But the link with the organisation seems rather weak; there are no signs of this murder being linked to any kind of activity within or in connection with the organisation.

Links (unfortunately all in Swedish):
Previously Aftonbladet.
After the trial in Aftonbladet.
Nationalsocialistisk Front (NSF) comments the case.

A question of moral values?

2007-10-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

I must say I don’t mind people going to bars, getting drunk and doing silly things like kissing and hugging one another. Not even when the people that are kissing each others are a close assistant of the prime minister and a political reporter in national television TV4. But a lot of people apparently do, strangely enough. I get particularly tiered from listen to the leader for the Christian Democratic Party Göran Hellström when he is complaining about lack of moral values in the leadership.

The Swedish princess Victoria recently said in an interview that she never feel relaxed anymore when she is out in public since everybody has a mobile phone with a camera nowadays. I would suggest that Ulrica Schenström gives that a thought and invites the reporters to her home instead, next time.

The problem is something different from moral values. Ulrica Schenström, as we now found out, is apparently in charge of national security. So far prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has not been able to tell if she removed her duties to somebody ells before she went out drinking. This suggests that she probably didn’t. Considering the amount of attacks from Fredrik Reinfeldt and his collegues on the former government for not handling the Tsunami-situation in a proper way one would think the new government would be more careful with those issues.

On the other hand: Lars Danielsson, assistant of the former prime minister Göran Persson, still can not tell what he was doing during the first day after the Tsunami. If there had been a new Tsunami this weekend we would at least have known afterwards about how Ulrica Schenströms spent her night, thanks to modern discrete mobile phones. I am not sure if that is something to be grateful of or not.

Sources (unfortunalty all i Swedish): Aftonbladet and Expressen, yesterday and Expressen today)

Estonian nurses preferes to go abroad

2007-10-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month I also attended a conference about migration in Tartu in Estonia (a beautiful town, by the way). It was part of the Decent Work-project and in connection with Solidar (in Brussels) and the Olof Palme International Centre (Stockholm.

Not many migrants go to Estonia, the problem is rather the opposite. Many skilled Estonians go abroad, e g nurses that works in Sweden. This is of course a lot easier nowadays when both Sweden and Estonia are members of the EU. But the stream of workers leaving the country might cease with increasing wages and better living standards in the whole of Baltic region.

Still I think Estonian needs to look upon migration in a more positive way; the conference showed clearly how many participants (particularly those from the trade unions) wanted to only se the problem. Strangely enough since there are very few wanting to go and work in Estonia. I believe that this country needs migrants in order to develop, just as all other countries in Europe. And that they rather should try to attract migrants in order to get economic growth and a more stimulating business sector. But we, particularly the trade unions, need to cooperate about migration workers and how to protect their rights. Right now the main focus would be those that goes from Estonia to work in Sweden. But in future it might as well be the other way around.

What good can EU external co-operation do?

2007-10-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

In the beginning of this month I went to Brussels for a seminar about EU and external co-operation. The seminar was arranged by European Journalism Centre, EJC.

57 per cent of the money in the world spent on development aid is provided by the EU countries. But it was quite clear from the information we got that there are many things that needs to be discussed about how the money is spent. Still, even though things are slowly changing, it is often security rather than humanitarian aid and support for development of human rights. And often old colonial relations that different countries want’s to keep and possibilities of good business relations, rather than a try to find out were the help is mostly needed. Still of course it’s a good thing that the EU-countries coordinates the work, a process that will lead to more effectiveness so that not every country operates everywhere but rather focuses on certain areas.

Former president of the EU-parliament Joseph Borrell (see picture) is now chairman of the EU-committee on Development. The EU parliament want’s to have a deeper involvement in the process of deciding and evaluating and this is possibly a good thing to strive for, not that more or less everything is decided by the EU Commission. Borrell was very critical particularly about how security issues dominates EU:s concern about the situation in Darfur. H.E. Mahamat Saleh Annadif (second picture), permanent representative of the African Union to the EU and former State Minister of Chad, was critical about the way EU still supports it's own agricultural sector. His message was that this needs to be changed if the EU really means something with helping to reduce poverty in Africa.

Swiss right-wing take the lead in election

2007-10-22T01:06:00.000-07:00

White sheep’s are kicking out a black sheep on the posters for SVP in Switzerland. One of five persons in Switzerland has a foreign origin, and the posters are widely criticised as expressing racism.

The expensive election campaign is partly paid by national companies, and SVP stepped forward and is now the biggest political party in Switzerland, according to preliminary results from Sunday.

Still, in spite of growing size and support, SVP as other right wing populist parties wants to be seen as the underdog; representatives are always talking about how they are oppressed by the establishment. I suppose Switzerland, just as Sweden and most other countries are kicking out people that commit crimes if they are citizens in another country. So what’s the point? Actually the very same message has also been delivered from similar parties in other countries. Somehow it doesn’t matter if the things they are telling are true or not, it is enough if people want’s to believe it’s true.

The picture shows how antiracist groups want's to kick out SVP instead.
Source: Articles would be found all over Europe, e g BBC

1 of 10 needs money from migrant workers

2007-10-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

A new report provides figures on approximatly how much money migrant workers in the world provides their families and their native countries with. One out of ten of the world population depends entirely on these money.

The total figure, according to IFAD - International Fund for Agricultural Development - is 3 000 billion US dollar for 2006, far more than former figures from the World Banks. There are possible 150 million migrant workers in the world, most of them occupied with unskilled works such as construction, domestic work and agriculture. For some countries this money is of a tremendous importance, it is 31 percent of the GNP in Moldavia. Philippines have possible the most migrant workers in the world compared to the size of the country.

There are a trend to look upon these transactions in a positive way. The problem is the costs for transactions, they should be reduced according to IFAD. The same was suggested by Global Commission on International Migration, GCIM, , a former initiative in the UN-system with a Swedish chairman, former Swedish minister Jan O Karlsson.

The Swedish trade union confederation LO have a more sceptical view of the problem. I quote from a report "Migration and labour market" (only in Swedish) that was presented last year (2006):
"It can be discussed if these flows, remittances, is something positive or negative. It is know that economy get a push forward but it can also be so that the pressure for transformation gets less which can lead to that necessary structural transformations in the country delays or doesn’t take place at all.” (My translation).
I have read those lines several times. To me it is cynical to not se the individual instinct to try to improve life basically as a positive force. But of course we need to discuss collective bargaining as well in order not to dump the wages.

Source: E24 and IFAD. My picture shows migrant workers from Burma working in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

"Only Swedish Art in Swedish municipalities"

2007-10-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

The Sweden Democrats, sd, (right wing populist party focusing on anti-immigration in general and anti-Islamism in particular) will possible have a fair chance of getting into the national parliament in next election 2010. The party got almost 3 % of the votes in the last national election (2006) and is represented in almost half of the municipal councils. This is not so much compared to similar parties in Norway and Denmark. But the Sweden Democrats has grown fast, the votes more than doubled from 2001 to 2006.

In general it has been said that the party has no intentions of change the politics in the municipalities since most of the decisions considering migration will be taken in the national parliament. But the more representatives the more publicity and the better the party will be known to the public by next national election.

This weekend the representatives of the party will get together for a conference to discuss guidelines for the work in the municipalities. A document has been presented at the Internet (Sweden Democrats, only in Swedish). It is quite clear that sd tries to be more precise about what it really means to adapt sd-politics in a local context. Suburbs with many refugees should not count on more money (even though it´s known that the problems are social rather than cultural), activities promoting crime should concentrate on reducing the amount of migrants, schools should not let pupils with a different confession than Christianity be out of school on religious festivals, no public support to migrants organisations (unless they promise not to preserve migrant culture), test to make sure migrants speak proper Swedish, public information will not be provided in other languages than Swedish. Additional to this it’s said that public art should always reflect national or local heritage.

There is an interview with me on this subject today in Svenska Dagbladet a local daily in Stockholm (in Swedish). In the picture, from left: Jimmie Åkesson, chairman in sd, vice chairman Jonas Åkerlund and Anna Hagwall, 2:a vice chairman.

Welcome Back

2007-10-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

I will soon start to share some of my texts in English as well.