Swedish Radio reported today that Swedish Customs (tullverket) has broken all records in confiscating pepper spray and tear gas at the border. Last year, customs seized 226 illegal products. This year, so far, they’ve seized 615 products – an increase of nearly 200%.
Jonas Karlsson, an expert with the National Coordination office at Customs, attributed the increase to rising anxiety and feelings of insecurity. “When people want to be able to defend themselves, they don’t usually choose a firearm but turn instead to tear gas or pepper spray.”
However, both tear gas and pepper spray are illegal to have without a license in Sweden. Both of them are considered weapons (read about the law here).
Not so in a couple of our neighbouring countries. Most of the goods are smuggled in from Denmark, where pepper spray is allowed in the home, and from Germany, where they’re both available without a license.
Customs believes that the number of canisters coming into the country is much higher than what they catch. “Our dogs aren’t trained for pepper spray” explained Karlsson. “We’ve also been told to prioritize firearms and narcotics.”
There are pepper-like sprays available for the nervous at heart, so called “defense sprays.” Using them, however, can still have serious legal consequences (see lawline.se). It might be better to sit tight and wait until the end of this government’s term of office – Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg claimed today that he was certain that gang violence will have decreased by that time (Svd.se/Damberg).
Nyamko Sabuni starts party congress in Västerås pic: folkbladet.se
The Liberal Party started their party congress today in Västerås with a speech by party leader Nyamko Sabuni, her first since being elected in late June. SvD reports that Sabuni’s speech avoided all sensitive topics, like support for the Löfven government and the January Agreement, and instead focused on the issue of suburban zones, or hotspots (utsatta områden).
“Parallell societies grow because we politicians allow it” Sabuni stated. “Today, we launch a program for the suburbs with an ambitious goal – that there will be no vulnerable zones in Sweden in the year 2030.” Sabuni mentioned reforms on all fronts – crime fighting, extremism, economical self sufficiency, gender equality, democratic values and safer residential areas. “The suggestions deal with stopping the slumification that is a breeding ground for a negative progression. It’s about measures to lessen overcrowded living conditions and measures to reduce the number of people living off of government support (Svd.se/Sabuni).
In more general terms, Sabuni tried to raise the profile of the Liberal party on other issues as well. “Liberalism must answer,” she declared, “when it comes to dealing with the important questions – not least climate issues, immigration and the socioeconomic gap that is only widening in this age of globalisation.”
Taking a page from her predecessor Jan Björklund’s favorite playbook, Sabuni also stressed the importance of schools, saying that for the Liberal party, schools form the basis for everything. “It is there dreams and hopes for the future are born. This is why we Liberals have always prioritized schools.”
Also honor violence was mentioned. “After every summer vacation we see empty chairs where a girl once sat. But few municipalities follow up and ask what happened with these girls, and no one knows how many there are. We know exactly how many Almas were born in Sweden in 2018 -564 – but not how many were taken from school and married off. It can’t continue like this.”
Tonight is the night Sweden’s Minister for Culture and Democracy, Amanda Lind, can be declared persona non grata and unwelcome in China. If the Swedish PEN prize is awarded to the jailed Swedish-Chinese publisher Gui Minhai, wrote the Chinese embassy on their website, there will be “consequences” (DN.se/Gui).
The Chinese embassy characterizes Gui Minhai as a “liar and a rumor-monger” DN reports. In an interview on Sweden’s Radio, the Chinese ambassador said that what Gui Minhai writes is based on lies, and that “Swedes, with a good conscience, cannot hurt the Chinese people’s feelings and damage Chinese interests.”
In response to the Chinese declaration, Prime Minister Löfven stated that the Minister for Culture and Democracy Lind will award the prize on Friday evening regardless of Chinese opinion. “She has been asked to give out the prize and she has said yes and it’s obvious we’re going keep that committment. In Sweden, we have freedom of expression – and that is what matters, period.”
China responded in turn that Amanda Lind will no longer be welcome in China if she gives out the Tucholsky Prize, which is specifically awarded to persecuted authors and publishers.
Gui Minhai left China for Sweden in 1988 to study. He became a Swedish citizen in 1992 and got his doctorate 4 years later. In 2012, he started a publishing company in Hongkong which gave out, among others, books on the Communist Party – which are forbidden on the Chinese mainland. About four years ago Gui Minhai disappeared during a visit to Thailand. It became clear afterwards that he had been picked up and detained by Chinese security. He is charged with a traffic violation that supposedly happened in 2003 (SvDse/GuiMinhai).
The question is not whether or not Lind attends the PEN event, but if she actually presents the prize herself. Lind says that it was obvious that she, as Minister for Culture and Democracy, would be there for the award ceremony – självklart att vara med på utdelningen (Svd.se/Lind), which isn’t the same as giving out the award. According to DN, the Chinese statement was that she would be denied entry to China if she participated in the prize ceremony – om hon deltar i prisceremonien. It remains unclear what will satisfy both the Chinese and the Swedish demands.
when you get the numbers wrong pic: Christine Olsson, DN
The good news is that unemployment in Sweden was 6%, not the 7.1% that was the official number made public in September (see this post). The bad news, is that the number was revised not because unemployment went down, but because the first number was completely wrong.
Statistics Sweden (SCB) is the official government agency tasked with supplying government agencies with statistics on which to base their decisions and policies going forward. But when SCB does their surveys, it costs somewhere between 345 to 620 kronor per interview. Looking to outsource and cut costs, SCB took in some offers. One company came back with an offer of 217 kronor per interview, while another said they would take 210 kronor per interview. But Evry, the consulting company who won the job, offered to do the interviews for 140 kronor per interview (SvD.se/Evry).
Evry “didn’t live up to what they promised they would” said Joakim Stymne, general director at SCB (SvD.se/Evry). The contract with Evry has now been terminated.
Robert Bergqvist, cheif economist at Svenska Enskilda Banken (SEB) remarked that the main worry isn’t so much the outcome but the mistake as such. “Statistics are incredibly important for economical and political decisions, and unemployment data plays an important role for both the government and the Swedish Central Bank.”
Handelsbanken’s senior economist, Johan Löf, echoed his colleague’s sentiments. “For example, the Swedish krona dipped in response to the numbers, even if the effect was over after a couple days. The numbers were still so surprising that it had an effect on the financial market. For many Swedes, the upcoming salary negotiations are central. In this beginning phase, when the sides are formulating their cases, we’ve had a situation with almost catastrophic numbers. This has been seen in their arguments”(SvD.se/Evry).
Minister for Finance Magdalena Andersson was equally unhappy. “It’s obviously extremely serious when a government authority publishes incorrect statistics” she stated. “When the unemployment numbers first came out, SCB was contacted because the numbers looked strange. We had meetings and telephone calls with SCB.” When asked what the result was from those calls Andersson replied that she couldn’t answer that question for the moment (SvD.se/Andersson). But, she said, “I could never have dreamed that it could be wrong in this way” (DN.se/Andersson).
Questions have been raised regarding the reliability of SCB going forward, as well as questions regarding what their budget has been and how the money has been spent. In related news, however, Aftonbladet reported late this afternoon that the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), no stranger to similar scandals and problems, is requesting that the government change the law of public procurement (lagen om offentlig upphandling) so that authorities, such as themselves and SCB, are no longer required to accept only the lowest offer. Trafikverket just made public the news that their project Ring Road Stockholm (förbifart Stockholm) is now going to be years late and billions of kronor more expensive than the original plan, because of mismanagement by the entrepreneur they hired to do the work – who has also now been fired (Aftonbladet.se/förbifart).
For those who are interested, the unemployment rate for October – according to SCB, and “smoothed and seasonally adjusted” – is 6.8%. Really.
can this wave be stopped? pic: watersource.awa.asn.au
In the wake of the shooting and the explosion over the weekend, that the police now suspect are connected, there are several actions in the works: the police have labelled their response an “extraordinary operation” (särskilt händelse), the Moderate party has said they are behind the Sweden Democrats’ decision to call a vote of no confidence in Minister for Justice Morgan Johansson, and the Malmö police are organizing a special conference, with the local criminals.
Only the terrorist attack on the pedestrians on Drottninggatan in April of 2017, and the forest fires in the summer of 2018, have previously been classified as “extraordinary operations” by the police department. The current operation is being called Operation Rimfrost (hoarfrost in English), and allows the police department to make the decision-making process faster and increases their authority to reprioritize and move police forces around. “The number of persons in criminal networks shall be reduced by force” said Stefan Hector, chief of operations for NOA, the national operations division, “by which we mean arrests, charges and sentencing.” The police hope to seize more weapons and explosives as well. “In about 6 months we will have seen a difference” Hector predicted (SvD.se/rimfrost).
In related news, the Sweden Democrats have said they will be bringing a motion of no confidence in Minister for Justice Johansson to the floor at the party leader debate on Wednesday – and the Moderate party has said they will support it. Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, declared that it was “obvious that the Minister for Justice, who in this case has the ultimate responsibility to handle this situation, does not understand its seriousness. He can’t handle it, and therefore parliament should in some way make clear its dissatisfaction with the work that is unfortunately not happening” (SR.se/Åkesson).
Moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson echoed his colleague. “It is right to direct a vote of no confidence in the Minister for Justice. For the last five years, he has been ultimately responsible for the situation we’ve arrived at in Sweden. It’s untenable. Either the minister does his job or he takes the consequences and resigns. We will be voting no confidence” (SR.se/Åkesson).
For a vote of no confidence to go through, at least 35 parliament members need to demand it. If a majority in parliament (175 members) vote yes, the minister in question must resign. So far, in Swedish history, there have only been nine – count ’em, nine – votes of no confidence. None of them has ever resulted in a minister’s resignation.
As far the other more right parties go, the Liberals have said they will not support a vote of no confidence, but that the government must “take vigorous measures against gangs.” The Christian Democrats haven’t yet commented. It is unlikely in the extreme that the more left Green or Center party will support it, altogether making the resignation of Johansson equally unlikely. The Moderate party’s youth wing, MuF, went its mother party one better and demanded a vote of no confidence in not just the Minister of Justice Johansson, but also on Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg (DN.se/MuF). That one won’t be going anywhere, for the moment at least.
Meanwhile, the local police in Malmö have called a meeting for Tuesday. With the local criminals. The criminals that come don’t have to be the most violent ones, or the leaders – as long as they have legitimacy and that the others “listen when they talk” said Glen Sjögren, coordinator the “Stop Shooting” project (read more about the project here).
“We’re giving them a message – that we don’t want them to die and we don’t want them to kill someone. If they, or someone in their group, commit a crime involving lethal violence or explosives we’re going to focus on their whole group. If they want to leave their criminal life behind them, we’re ready to help them with that too” said Sjögren. “The goal is to stop the current crime wave and to prevent an escalation” (DN.se/slutaskjuta).
It seems like it’s all hands on deck, but whether or not talking leads to actions and then to an effect is anyone’s guess.
Welcome to Malmö pic: liveablestreet.wordpress.com
The death of a 15 year old who was shot in Malmö yesterday evening has caused a minor uproar. The pizzeria where he was shot is in a central part of Malmö, Möllevångstorget. One other, slightly older boy was also shot and is in serious condition. As of yet, there is no formal idea of who might be responsible.
DN interviewed several people who came to light a candle in a show of sorrow at the pizzeria. One woman, named Johanna, didn’t want to say her last name or have her picture taken at the scene. “I feel a huge hopelessness for the children who grow up in this town” she said. “I’m so scared that this will feed anti-democratic sentiment.”
DN quotes another passer-by as well, a sixty year old man, who describes the latest development as a nightmare: “A country like Sweden should take care of its citizens, but then this happens. I’ve been on the other side myself, I lived in this world for almost four decades. This is just crazy. They’re children. What can a 15 year old have done to deserve this? It’s the older ones who are using the younger ones: It can’t be anything else. And this whole thing with explosions. It’s only a small number who deal in these kinds of things. It shouldn’t be so hard to figure out.”
Only two kilometers away, reports of an explosion were called in, close to the time of the shooting. The police are treating these incidents as unrelated, SvD reports. But “per capita,” Henrik Häggström, senior analyst at the Swedish Defense University (försvarshögskolan) said in an interview with TV4: “you have to go to Afghanistan to find a similar situation to the one in Sweden” (SvD.se/15).
The shooters were said to have fled the scene on bicycles – being, perhaps, too young to have a drivers license.
Ebba Busch Thor at KD’s riksting pic: expressen.se
The Liberal, Green, Center, Left and Moderate parties along with SD have all had their congresses and the turn has finally come for the Christian Democratic party (Kristdemokraterna) to have theirs, a riksting, now taking place in Umeå.
Since the election in September of last year, support for KD has taken a nosedive, from over 12 % to under 7%. Many have attributed the decrease to when it was revealed that their number one representative in EU, and big party name, Lars Adaktusson voted against pro-choice legislation at the EU – not just once, but repeatedly. Adaktusson’s excuse that he was actually only voting against other issues tacked onto the legislation, not against abortion per se, didn’t cut it with many voters. Their support decrease has also been attributed to KD’s strong support for asylum seekers’ ability to bring over their family members to Sweden (SvD.se/KD).
So far at the congress, Adaktusson has been switched out from his position as second vice chair (although he’ll still be a representative in parliament): They have maintained ever since the scandal came out that a woman’ right to choose has never, ever been a question. As far as refugees bringing over family members (familjåterförening), KD is now taking a harder line, saying that in order to bring family over, the person in Sweden must prove that they can support them economically .
New proposals discussed at the congress also include supporting a language test as well as a so called civics (samhällskunskap) test that need to be passed in order to qualify for permanent residency and/or citizenship. For many people, this is considered a completely unreasonable thing to ask of refugees: Among other reasons, many people believe that immigrants should not have to face a test that other people in the country have not had to face. Having to pass a language test is an old proposal that the Liberal party tried to get support for back in 2002, but which failed badly. One of the parties against the language test back then was the Christian Democrats, arguing that you didn’t need to speak Swedish to be a good citizen (SvD.se/language).
Times have clearly changed. In this round, Soheila Fors, a representative from the women’s caucus, argued that an immigrant can’t be successful, get a job, or learn what human rights or democracy is about if they can’t speak the language. “We get put into an aquarium” she argued “and are fed by welfare services” (DN.se/KD). In this vein, KD is also in favor of narrowing the right to have the services of a publicly financed interpreter after having lived five years in the country.
The congress continues on Sunday. A debate over allowing begging, as well as the final decisions regarding the above questions, is expected.
what happens if you won’t put on your seatbelt pic: traveller.com.au
Elin Ersson, the activist that stopped a plane from taking off in order to keep a man from being deported back to Afghanistan, was again convicted of breaking the law under the Aviation Act (luftfartslagen). As SvD’s legal commentator, Mårten Schulz, explains, someone who willfully or through gross negligence ignores the directions of an officer can be held responsible. The punishment for doing this, however, isn’t that much – about on par, Schulz says, with hopping the turnstile going into the subway. Ersson was fined 60 day-fines (dagsböter) for a total of 4200 kronor.
The Ersson case has had a couple twists and turns. Ersson boarded a plane in the summer of last year to stop the deportation of one man in particular, but it turned out that that particular man wasn’t on the flight. Another man, who Ersson didn’t know and whose case was unfamiliar to her, was on the plane being deported instead. Ersson decided to go through with her protest anyway, and refused to sit down so that the plane could taxi to takeoff. She was charged, and convicted last February, of not obeying the plane’s officers and sitting down.
However, in an investigation by Svenska Dagbladet, it came to light that one of the lay judges (nämndeman) in her case had called Ersson a criminal before the trial had even begun. Obviously, his judgement was totally compromised, and the trial had to be done over. (For more on the judicial process in Sweden, in particular about the Swedish system of lay judges, see this post.) The do-over trial has now been completed and the judgement remains the same: Ersson has again been found in breach of the Aviation Act.
The crime, however, is not actually in the Swedish penal code, and some commentators are making the argument that the verdict should be made more concrete than what is stated in the fuzzier Aviation Act (SvD.se/Ersson). Ersson’s sentence is based the judges’ understanding that while only the captain can make the decision that it is time to sit down and put your seatbelt on in preparation for takeoff, the cabin personnel in that case are acting as the messengers for the captain. Ersson claimed that she didn’t see the “put on your seatbelt” light, and that it was only the cabin personnel’s requests to do so. (The captain and the crew were not questioned in either trial.)
In addition, Ersson’s lawyer Thomas Fridh is also saying that not only didn’t she see the lamp, she never meant to break the law or to make a stand through civil disobedience – she was only protesting Swedish asylum policy. Thomas Fridh says that Ersson could not have foreseen how the law would be interpreted (Svd.se/Ersson2).
“We’re going to appeal” said Fridh. “If only to get some clarity on what the terms are if a similar action is under consideration” (Svd.se/Ersson2).
The cost for Ersson’s actions, according to the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, was around 240,000 kronor. Dagens Nyheter notes that both the man Ersson meant to save from deportation when she boarded the plane, and the man whose deportation Ersson ended up being arrested for by obstructing the plane’s operation, have since been deported.
Day-fines (dagsböter) are doled out as punishment for crimes that are more serious than speeding, but less serious than mandatory jail time. They’re factored by both the number of days and the income of the person being fined. 60 days isn’t that very long (dagsböter can go up to 150 days), and Ersson has little income – the court has leeway in setting an income marker and in this case set it at 70 kronor per day. 60 days, 70 kronor a day, makes 4200 kronor. Had Ersson had a much higher income, her fine would have been a lot higher, but could still have a length of 60 days. Day-fines are set in some European countries (Finland, Germany and Denmark, for example) but aren’t done in the US and only partially in the UK (thanks Wikipedia).
not as good as everyone thought, but still very good pic: preply.com
It wasn’t first page news, but it was still in bold text in Svenska Dagbladet’s newspaper this morning – Swedes no longer best at English. In a survey run by EF, Education First, Sweden landed in second place this year, after the Netherlands. In the nine years since EF started the survey, Sweden has been in first place for 4 of those years (ef.se).
Is there a crisis? Nja. “Maybe some Swedes are taking English a little too much for granted because we’ve ranked so highly for a long time” said Malin Ankarberg, Education First’s country manager for Sweden. “I don’t think we should make a big thing out of this year’s results. We see a small step back, but maybe that’s necessary to get people to realize that we can do better.”
Education First, or EF as it is more commonly known, is an international company with offices in a dozen countries, and arranges language tours and courses as well as education exchanges. If you or someone you love wants to beef up their English, coincidentally, EF has a course just for you.
This is twice in the same year the government surplus objective – aka överskottsmålet, is coming to the fore in news. The first time was only last August, when – “oops” – the National Debt Office was 6 billion kronor off estimating the government’s tax income: Suddenly the Social Democrats and Green parties had a lot less money to spend on fave projects than they thought. But due to the surplus (read about it here), Sweden still had funds in the bank if needed.
Now, however, Minister for Finance Magdalena Andersson is looking over at that surplus like it’s a dessert cart. Instead of a surplus objective, SvD reports, she’s advocating a budget “balance goal” – a balansmål. Instead of having a surplus, in case of a rainy day or financial downturn, the new goalpost would just be a balanced budget. The 16 billion kronor that would suddenly become available, could be used, she says, for things like infrastructure, the police force or health care.
The government surplus objective isn’t up for debate before 2024 – eons in political time – but Andersson is hoping for an earlier review date. The Left and Green parties are already on her side, but others are more wary. The mandatory surplus (which has already been cut down in size since the financial crisis of the 90s when it was first instituted) was put in place for a reason – as a safeguard for a time when the state’s finances might be truly desperate. Most analysts don’t think we’re there right now, so there’s no reason to use the surplus.
After all, as the Swedish saying goes “she who sets by, gets by” (hon som spar, har).
