pic: infomigrants.net
For many people, Sweden’s inability, or unwillingness, to bring back to Sweden the children of Swedish citizens in refugee camps for IS-sympathizers has been slightly inexplicable. After all, if a determined grandfather can go in there and get out his 7 orphan grandchildren, surely the government of Sweden can rescue the others if they wanted to. They have said it’s complicated, but that they’re really trying (see this post).
In an interview with Dagens Nyheter, published yesterday in connection with the “Speaking memories – the Holocaust’s last witnesses” exhibition at the Swedish History Museum, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven made clear that he wasn’t interested in bringing back families.
To those who traveled to IS country, Löfven had this message – you must lie in the bed you made (stå din kast). “Clearly,” said Löfven, “they were attracted to a community – for some reason I can’t understand – in which they believed. I can’t answer for them, but the rest our society must condemn it. And those that went there, they have to accept the consequences for what they did. Some of them say they would now like to come home. No. They were advised not to travel there already in 2011, but they went anyway, and now they must live with the results of their actions. I can’t feel anything but disgust. Seriously. What IS did there… you can’t believe it’s true when you hear the stories that come from those who have survived. Sweden shall be something quite different.”
It’s not clear if Stefan Löfven was speaking as the leader of the Social Democratic party or for the government, but at least he staked out a clear position. Going forward, it’s still unclear as regards the children. Certainly, it’s hard to say that their staying in the camps is acting in accord with the child’s best interests – an otherwise governing principle in Swedish affairs and in the soon-to-be-Swedish-law Convention on the Rights of the Child. But keeping the child with a parent has been another governing principle, and one that the government has perhaps decided it wants to have come first this time. However clear Löfven might want to be, he’s still ducking this issue.