Biased judicial system

 

Once again the Swedes have been reminded about the many imperfections of the welfare state they are so proud of. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) released today a research report describing how citizens with immigrant background are denied the right kind of treatment by the institutions responsible of protecting and implementing the law.

The Swedish judicial system is supposed to work for the security and safety of the individual. And its aim is said to reduce criminality and increase people’s security. But it does not work in such obvious, honourable way all the time. Justice is certainly not impartial and as much as necessary righteous when it deals with immigrants, the research report concludes.

Racially biased policemen, crime investigators, prosecutors, magistrates and prison guards make it impossible for many immigrant criminals, eyewitnesses or victims to get a just process from crime to punishment.

The Swedish Police, the Office of the Public Prosecutor, the National Board of Forensic Medicine, the Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, Swedish Courts, as well as the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention and the Swedish Criminal Victim Compensation and Support Authority are all institutions where the multicultural society of Sweden its not proportionally represented.

To a large level these Swedish institutions are in fact so “racially cleaned” than they sometimes remind you of the atrocious Apartheid system in South Africa. And that’s something which must change as soon as possible. Swedes with immigrant background – about 20 percent of the population - deserve to be part of the Swedish judicial system, not only the victims of its prejudices or its prisoners.  

END NOTE: Do you have any questions about the report? Call or mail to the researchers David Shannon (+46-8-504 454 05), Nina Törnqvist (+46-8-401 87 95), Peter Martens (+46-8-401 87 02) or Felipe Estrada (+46-8-504 454 06).

What kind of Negro are you?

Quick test to measure your knowledge about who’s who in the fight against racial oppression in Sweden: 

NAME	House Negro	Field Negro
Dilsa Demirbag-Sten
Halil Magnus Karaveli
Mauricio Rojas
Carlos Rojas Beskow
Masoud Kamali
H.M. Drottning Silvia
Alexandra Pascalidou
Douglas ”Dogge Doggelito” León
Thomas Gür
Paulina de los Reyes
Evin Rubar
Christian Catomeris
Luciano Astudillo
Maryam Yazdanfar

 

The future of Cuba

 

The year was 1994. Sven Öste, one of Sweden’s most respected journalists, decided to enjoy the hordes of intellectuals around the world using their knowledge and writing skills to put an end to Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.

 Sven Öste knew in fact quite a lot about world affairs, he had visited and reported from places like Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa, the US and of course Cuba. At the age of 69 he had seen quite a lot to believe he could deliver a fair verdict about the one year younger man in Havana.

In the autumn of 1994 the monthly magazine VI bursted out on its front-page: The Bell Tolls for Castro. The conclusion was that Fidel had once again been left alone and Cuba’s economic crisis was going to make the system to topple. Sven Öste had read Andres Oppenheimer’s book “Castro’s Final Hour: The Secret Story Behind The Coming Downfall Of Communist Cuba.”  

The writer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from Argentina working at The Miami Herald, came in 1992 to the conclusion that the collapse of the Soviet empire and the deterioration caused by Fidel Castro’s authoritarian rule were about to start a radical reaction from the Cuban masses against all he has done and stood for.

But the collapse and the people’s reaction didn’t happen. The bell didn’t toll. Sven Öste died in 1996. His heart could not make it any longer.  Anders Oppenheimer, born in 1951, is still vigorous and doing his best from his Florida base. He may perhaps be right now reading Brian Latell’s book “After Fidel, Updated Edition: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba’s Revolution”, an interesting book even if it does not really say that much about the future of Cuba.

And it is quite easy to understand why. Predicting the future is namely tricky business. Many peoples, nations and political systems are enduring and have more lives than a cat. That’s why it is stupid to try to kill them prior to the time’s resolute bell ultimately tolls – because it certainly does for all of us, at the end, when the time is right. Not before, not after – just then. So even for Fidel Castro, his revolution comrades and his ferocious critics at home and abroad.

Rrezartas home

What’s home? Is it where you live or the place where you are most pleased with life? It’s difficult to say. Home is not a physical habitat, is the summa of several feelings which bring into being a warm status of happiness, the sense of absolute joy and safety.

That’s the “home” I see infront of me when I read about Rrezarta Krasniqi in today’s edition of Östgöta Correspondenten.  She’s seventeen and her family was forced to run off to Sweden from Kosovo when she was two years old. Despite living in Linköping for 15 years, Rrezarta feels mostly at her very best when she travels to Kosovo during school leave.

And I can entirely understand her feelings. Home is where your grandmother lives.  In April this year, I will be travelling thousands of kilometres to visit my own beautiful iron lady: abuela Eugenia – she’s about to turn 90 and full of life. Even though she’s shrinking day by day and looks a bit weak, she still hugs you with lots of energy and love. Abuela Eugenia is home for me.  

Reading about Rrezarta reminds me also about a question my chief editor asked me some weeks ago. He’s worried about the future of the traditional newspaper because fewer people want to pay for it nowdays when information is all free on the Internet. What could we do to secure our incomes and keep our readers, the chief editor asked.  

The answer is simple: more high quality articles like this one about Rrezarta Krasniqi written by Åsa Christoffersson, more photographs like those taken by Jeppe Gustafsson. That kind of terrific, startling journalism is what makes the newspaper exclusive and inimitable, and that’s something people always will be ready to pay for.

Racist sharks

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist at The Independent, writes about how millions of black and Asian Britons have their hopes fulfilled and have reached success in a country that is richer and more prosperous and fairer than it ever was… But, she warns, circling sharks endanger their lives and fill them with fears.

Those are the racist sharks promoting a rude discourse and speaking their bloody mind in the public sphere and, by doing so, coarsening society and affirming bigotry.

The words of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown could apply to the Swedish case. But those are words never written or if written never published in the Swedish press.

Here too, the elites in power condemn immigrants speaking the true and celebrate the foolish, self-serving immigrants who encourage racist tendencies instead of standing up to them.