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DEMOCRACY

Foreign office on hand to aid stranded Swedes

Sweden's foreign ministry has set up a desk at Cairo airport to help Swedish travellers seeking to find a way home.

Foreign office on hand to aid stranded Swedes

The situation at Cairo airport has been chaotic the past few days. Food and drink supplies have been running low and a slew of flights have been canceled. The foreign ministry is now on site to aid Swedes seeking assistance.

“We will try to assist the Swedes who want to go home by, for example, assessing which planes are flying and how we can get the Swedes on the plane,” said Tobias Olsson at the foreign ministry’s press service.

The foreign ministry has now opened up an information desk at the airport with staff on hand to assist travellers. The desk can be found in the departure hall of terminal three.

Thousands of Swedes travel to Egypt every week during the winter tourist season and travel companies are working furiously to help those looking to change their holiday destinations.

Travel firm Ving is among those exploring other routes and has, for example, expanding its capacity to several destinations such as Fuerteventura, Madeira and Agadir in Morocco.

Fritidsresor has meanwhile announced that it plans to lay on more flights to Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife.

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PROTESTS

Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

The chairwoman of the Police Association West Region has said that police special tactics, known as Särskild polistaktik or SPT, should be available across Sweden, to use in demonstrations similar to those during the Easter weekend.

Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

SPT, (Särskild polistaktik), is a tactic where the police work with communication rather than physical measures to reduce the risk of conflicts during events like demonstrations.

Tactics include knowledge about how social movements function and how crowds act, as well as understanding how individuals and groups act in a given situation. Police may attempt to engage in collaboration and trust building, which they are specially trained to do.

Katharina von Sydow, chairwoman of the Police Association West Region, told Swedish Radio P4 West that the concept should exist throughout the country.

“We have nothing to defend ourselves within 10 to 15 metres. We need tools to stop this type of violent riot without doing too much damage,” she said.

SPT is used in the West region, the South region and in Stockholm, which doesn’t cover all the places where the Easter weekend riots took place.

In the wake of the riots, police unions and the police’s chief safety representative had a meeting with the National Police Chief, Anders Tornberg, and demanded an evaluation of the police’s work. Katharina von Sydow now hopes that the tactics will be introduced everywhere.

“This concept must exist throughout the country”, she said.

During the Easter weekend around 200 people were involved in riots after a planned demonstration by anti-Muslim Danish politician Rasmus Paludan and his party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), that included the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

Police revealed on Friday that at least 104 officers were injured in counter-demonstrations that they say were hijacked by criminal gangs intent on targeting the police. 

Forty people were arrested and police are continuing to investigate the violent riots for which they admitted they were unprepared. 

Paludan’s application for another demonstration this weekend was rejected by police.

In Norway on Saturday, police used tear gas against several people during a Koran-burning demonstration after hundreds of counter-demonstrators clashed with police in the town of Sandefjord.

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