Refugees hostel attacked in Southern Sweden

This morning, right before 05.00 a fire was discovered outside a hostel for refugees in Vellinge, a neighbouring village to Malmö in souther Sweden. The night was rainy, and a police officer stoically commented "a fire doesn't start by itself in this weather".

I have recently written about this story. It goes like this:

• Due to unknown factors many refugge children come to Sweden without their parents.
• Most of them arrive in Malmö, because it is the southernmost entrance point to Sweden. (Most likely someone is paid to take them to Sweden, and drops them of once they cross the border)
• Malmö can't find places to host the refugees, and have asked neighbouring municipalities to help.
• Most of the neighbouring municipalities don't want to help Malmö, unless they get money from the state. The state mumbles something about human rights, responsibities etc. but without money on the table nothing happens.
• Vellinge has a very outspoken mayor, who has told all media that he will not take over any problematic refugees from Malmö...
  
• Malmö eventually paied a private company to host the refugees. Guess where the hostel is situated...
• in Vellinge. A huge scandal occurs. The official Vellinge yells about their right to rule as they want, and that Malmö didn't inform them about the hostel. The rest of Sweden more less hypocritically accuse the Vellinge inhabitants of racism. Plenty of normal people who happen to live in Vellinge are embarrased and frustrated by the whole mess.

 And this night some racist tried to set the hostel on fire.


I find the whole story utterly disgusting. Putting the blame entirely on Vellinge is missing the point. After all, 15 Swedish municipalities make exactly the same statement as Vellinge, but they are not stupid enough to boast about it in the papers.

Thus, the whole story has developed into a power struggle between the state, Malmö and Vellinge, who all use these people who decided to come to Sweden for their political means. the traaditional "blame game" as we know it from Bulgarian (or other) politics.

In Bulgaria the politicians at least had the decency to argue about waste, in stead of treating real people like waste. But obviously that was a bigger crime in the European eyes. The European Comission has recently started a trial against Bulgaria over its garbage disposal in Sofia. Bulgaria has protested, and I must agree...  How about starting a trial against Sweden over its  refugee "disposal" in Malmö/Vellinge.

As any modern state Sweden has an obligation to defend human rights of all people staying on its territory. Swedish authorities now shamefully fail in safeguarding the most basic human rights of the refugees, including the 3rd article - the right to live.

The  UN's declaration of human rigths begins with statint that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights". I see no freedom. I see no equality. And most of all I miss seeing dignity.


Further reading:

If you read  Bulgarian, the situation of paperless immigrants have been discussed also in the Bulgarian blogsphere recently:


http://svetlaen.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post_09.html
http://svetlaen.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post_15.html
http://svetlaen.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post_17.html

Welcome to Sweden

I remember last summer, laying on a beach at the Bulgarian Black Sea cost and spelling my way through an entire Kapital saturday issue. The topic of the issue was the waste-war between Sofia's mayor Bojko Borisov and the premier minister Sergei Stanishev hat raged on and on until Borisov replaced Stanishev as he leader of the Balkan country.

The problem in Bulgaria at the time,  was that the city Sofia produced much more waste than it could digest. Stanishev said that this was Borisov's fault, Borisov blamed Stanishev etc. Sofia wanted to dump the waste somewhere else, but no one wanted to accept the waste. Of course. Eventually a solution was found, where the waste is taken to the village Shishmanci where it will be processed in the European way.

I dont't think this story showed the gentlemen from their best sides, but unfortunately they arenot alone. Here in Sweden the same drama is now unfolding, only that the argue is about people treated like waste, and not waste given political significance.

Malmö is the biggest city in southern Sweden, and the obvious point of entry for refugees coming to Sweden from the continent. Lately there has been a great influx of children without families, for reasons that I don't know. The radio this morning said the number of single refugee children are currently around 90.

These kids come to Malmö, are put in a hotel, where they are supposed to stay for some days until a more suitable long-time housing solution is found. Unfortunately, finding a such solution have been a nightmare for the Malmö municipality. Eventually they hired places by a private company in the care business (otherwise working with mentally disabled, for example), in a smaller town nearby called Vellinge.

The Vellinge local politicians object and say that they don't want any refugees kids there. This is Malmö's problem, that Malmö should solve. One could mock the right wing mayor*, usually a staunch market fundamentalist, for messing up with what a private company in his municipality does. But unfortunately his socialist competitors agree with him on this issue. Citizens have also protested to show that they don't want anything else than blonde kids with rich parents playing on their streets.

This is one of the scary aspects of immigrant policy in Sweden - there is a conservative consensus spanning over all the biggest parties that ensure that exactly this policy is not affected by elections.

What is not scary, but shameful, is the narrow mindedness of the Vellinge politicians. Vellinge happens to be one of Sweden's richest municipalities, i.e. one of the richest in the world. They don't have any social problems compared to other places in southern Sweden like Malmö or Landskrona. They have 3,6 % unemployment when the national ratio is 8,4 %. If vellinge can not afford to help these children, who on earth can?

The protests show the great Western misunderstanding that everyone comes here, as if these 90 children were all refugees in the world. The greatest numbers of refugees still live in very poor countries neighbouring their home countries, and we are simply helping out, as little as we can.

The scandal that is now played up in national media is a huge disgrace, not much different from the Bulgarian waste scandal.  But we are talking living, vulnerable children, that need any help they can get. But at least we are processing them in the European way...

*We don't really have mayors in Sweden, but I use the word for convenience. He has a similar position.