Tugging on Sweden’s Heartstrings

If an American politician wants to impose something unpopular on the voters, he first frames the issue as being urgently necessary “for the sake of the children.”

Hillary Clinton has proved particularly adept at this tactic. Whatever the progressive ideal might be — socialized health care, gun control, reducing the consumption of sugary drinks, curbing the production of SUVs — proclaiming it as beneficial to children is guaranteed to sandbag the opposition. It doesn’t matter if it’s foolish, short-sighted, and breaks the budget — if it’s for the kids, why, we’ve got to have it!

The same seems to be true in Sweden. It’s entertaining to see the media and politicians tugging the heartstrings about children in a country where having children has become distinctly unfashionable. Yet the Swedes seem to fall for it — “Och, the wee bairns! We mustn’t let them doon!” Or whatever idiom is current in the dialect of Småland or Gåvleborg.

Ali, the puir wee Afghan refugee boy, is a case in point. The “for the children” meme converges in Ali with the paperless “child” asylum-seeker syndrome, a common phenomenon in Scandinavia these days. Young men arrive in one of the Nordic utopias, destroy all their identifying papers, and then claim to be twelve or fourteen, thereby invoking the special rules protecting children seeking asylum. No matter that they have a heavy five-o’clock shadow, and maybe even a few gray hairs! They’re children, and the collective Swedish heart bleeds for them.

Our Swedish correspondent LN has compiled a report on Ali the child refugee. On Thursday it looked like the poor lad was to be kicked out of the country, but before the end of the day the Migration Board had been forced to relent, and Ali may now stay in Sweden indefinitely.

Along, one presumes, with his parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, eventually…


The same heartbreaking story viewed from opposite directions

by LN

In recent days the Swedish public has become massively interested in the fate of a very special human being. An Afghan boy named Ali — 15 years old according to his own statement — who has applied for asylum in Sweden, was to be deported to Italy (the first country where he entered the EU) according to the current Dublin Convention.

Public opinion in Sweden is as usual polarized in two orientations:

A.		The leftish, liberal, green, xenophilic, Islamophilic or Islamoneutral, feminist, non-racist, politically correct, good-hearted or sentimental, ignorant or indifferent majority comprising at least 75% of the population; and
B.		The rest: the “ugly”, right-extreme, fascistic, xenophobic and Islamophobic, racist, vicious, politically committed and realistic part, of which perhaps more than half are Sweden Democrats and sympathizers with that party.

To illustrate orientation A, here follow the main features of a deviant neutral editorial in Aftonbladet, September 6, 2012, written by Anders Lindberg:

Yesterday, very many voices were raised to insist that a 15-year-old boy, Ali, be allowed to remain in Sweden. He came here from Italy, where he was subjected to beatings and rape — now he shall be returned. Of course it is possible to have more generous asylum rules — but Tobias Billström, the Minister of Immigration, and the government do not want to. They fear that xenophobia will increase unless refugee policy is kept restrictive. The planned deportation of Ali is the practical consequence of this reasoning.

Yesterday the attention to his case was raised by the Swedish Radio News Program Echo. Ali comes from Afghanistan and fled to Sweden via Italy. There he was beaten by the police. The day after he was subjected to a rough rape by three men in the refugee camp. They forced him down on his back, held onto his arms and spread his legs. Then they took turns on him, and made a cutting motion across their throats afterwards.

“They would kill him if he said anything”, his advocate Annette Cromwell tells Aftonbladet.

Ali says he is 15 years old, and after the rape he allegedly attempted suicide several times. He also stitched his own lips together, with the result that the lonely refugee boy Ali was admitted to the children’s psychiatric hospital, where he now is waiting for the border police to deport him to Italy. Yesterday several authoritative voices were raised saying that Ali’s case should be reconsidered. Among them are also officials from the Immigration Service.

• It is clear that he must be allowed to stay.
  
• A deportation would be inhumane.

To illustrate orientation B, here follows a representative comment by a diligent, earnest and respected female commentator/reader of a well-known Sweden Democratic site, the owner of which is one of the 20 (of 349) Sweden Democrat members of parliament.

Wednesday 5 Sept 19:47

“This boy is too sick,” says our EU Commissioner Cecilia Wikström (Liberal) regarding the media’s latest news array on the “refugee child” to be deported.

Of course the boy (or young man) is desperate.

Here his family and several clan members have collected money for a first payment to human smugglers and signed the continuing installment contracts. They have entrusted the mission solely to this young man to bluff himself into the benevolent country of Sweden, where the honey and the money flow freely. According to the smugglers it is just a snap to lie oneself in there, and several thousand other Afghan “unaccompanied children” have managed just fine to play the famous role of a “forlorn refugee orphan child” in Sweden.

Some time after having received a residence permit (PUT), he will probably get married (if he now is unmarried) to a relative or clan member and then the obligatory family reunion in Sweden starts [compare what is now happening with the (French-speaking!!!) Somalis] and Swedish tax money also begins to flow to the remaining clan members in Afghanistan.

Everything depends on this young man. He simply cannot fail!

One cannot help feeling very sorry for him.

What happens to him and his family if he fails and is sent back?

Are all Swedish Goodness Politicians, Goodness Apostles and every Goodness Feminist in the land conscious that they in (un-)holy agreement with refugee smugglers/traffickers are playing Russian roulette with the lives and limbs of people in distant lands who are looking for (what they think will be) a wonderful future life in Sweden?

Later in the day, the media reported that the Migration Board had decided that Ali could stay. First, a brief note from SVT (Swedish state television), obviously representing Orientation A:

Afghan boy may remain indefinitely

After the new law makes the decision to send a 15-year-old Afghan asylum seeker boy to Italy shall be re-examined. The Migration Board decided on Thursday after new information on the boy’s health.

Published September 6, 2012 — 17:20 — Updated 6 September 2012 — 18:06

[…]

The lawyer for the 15-year-old claims that the boy’s health is so poor that a handover is not possible, and after new information about his health, the Migration Board decided not to hand him over for the time being.

A longer article from Aftonbladet, also representing Orientation A:

15-year-old is allowed to stay — until further notice

Malmö — Immigration Service will postpone until further notice the rejection of the heavily traumatized 15-year-old Afghan boy in Malmö.

“We have new information that must be investigated,” says Fredrik Bengtsson, Head of the Migration Board.

The 15-year-old boy will be allowed to stay in Sweden until further notice. The Migration Board decided on Thursday inhibition. This means that the transfer to Italy is not implemented yet.

Late yesterday afternoon the boy’s advocate sent in a formal request to the Migration Board for a temporary stay for his deportation case to be re-examined, reports several news media.

Without such a request, they say they are really unable to act at all. But now they have been forced to take a decision one way or the other. The basis for the requirement for the stay of expulsion is the boy’s deteriorating mental state.

He is being cared for in a emergency psychiatric clinic in Malmö. The Swedish Migration Board has promised to consider the matter at the highest priority. The 15-year-old Afghan is just one of several unaccompanied children Sweden plans to send away under the so-called Dublin Convention.

It means that a refugee’s asylum application shall be determined by the country in which he or she first comes to, in this case Italy. But he said the Italian police had beaten him badly and threatened him.

Later he was also the victim of gang rape at a refugee center in Italy. He came to Sweden in December last year.

Meanwhile, efforts to develop proposals for a new Dublin Convention just ended. Among other things, they will strengthen the protection of refugee minors, according to MEP Cecilia Wikström (Lib).

There has long been a possibility for a country to take over the asylum case from the first country of asylum seekers arrived. In the case of 15-year-old, it would mean that the adjudication takes place in Sweden instead of Italy.

“The difference in the new regulation is that we have an article that also says that if there is a risk of inhumane or degrading treatment in the first country, we must not return the person there, but it is the country in which the person resides that must take charge.” Cecilia Wikström is critical of how the 15-year-old was treated.

“One should always act and make decisions in accordance with the best interests of children. There is nothing in this case to suggest that it is in the child’s best interest to be returned to Italy,” she said.

Another addition to the Dublin Convention is that the applicant will also have the opportunity to tell his story in the other country.

The proposal has been developed by the EU Parliament, the EU Commission and the Council of Ministers. It will be presented to the EU Parliament later this fall. According to the Migration Board’s press officer, it gives Swedish authorities the ability to deviate from the Dublin Convention and decide on asylum and residence permits. This is, however, extremely rare.

Now for two brief samples representing Orientation B. First, from Sweden Confidential:

SOB SOB With near-war headlines, “Evening RotoMaster” writes today: Boy sewed his mouth shut — Police: “Deport.” It does everything in its corrupt, unfair and Swedish-communist-thinking power to demonize everything and everyone that does not let Tom, Dick and Harry get a residence permit with a lifetime welfare benefits in Sweden.

And from Avpixlat:

“15-year-old” asylum bluffer allowed to stay in Sweden

ASYLUM ABUSE Yesterday we wrote about an alleged 15-year-old — but probably much older — Afghan “boy” who first sought asylum in Italy but then realized the benefit system in Sweden was better and sought asylum here, too. When we wrote that we feared that the rule of law would be eliminated after the media went into war headlines and fiercely angled it to a refugee tear-jerker with an accusing finger directed against the Swedish authorities as evil personified. And today our fears come true. The Afghan “boy” is allowed to stay in Sweden.

This is the sorry state of affairs in my country — which I prefer to call Kretinostan.