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DISCRIMINATION

Guide dog not a hot ticket to disability bash

A partially-sighted Swedish woman was barred from a disability conference because another attendee was allergic to her guide dog, but has retaliated by reporting the incident to Sweden's Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen).

Published: 7 December 2012 16:15 CET

Guide dog not a hot ticket to disability bash

The conference, dubbed Today’s Disabilities, was organized in early November 2012 by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen).

“They said I couldn’t attend because a woman at the conference was allergic to dogs,” the woman wrote in her complaint.

The woman, who also suffers chronic pain, said event organizers had previously said it was fine to bring the dog with her.

The standard form used to submit reports to the Ombudsman asks what the nature of the would-be-discrimination is. The woman chose not to tick any of the boxes available – gender, ethnicty, age, religion or even disability – and instead wrote:

“There is a huge lack of knowledge about allergies; myths and ignorance have been allowed to become ‘true’ without anyone looking at the facts.”

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'Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority': Truth commission releases report

Stockholm’s policy of assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries “harmed the minority and continues to hinder the defence of its language, culture and traditional livelihoods,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset said in an article published in Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter.

“Amends must be made in order to move forward,” it said, adding that “acknowledging the historic wrongdoings” should be a first step.

The commission, which began work in June 2020, was to submit a final report to the government on Wednesday.

Tornedalen is a geographical area in northeastern Sweden and northwestern Finland. The Tornedalian, Kven and Lantalaiset minority groups are often grouped under the name Tornedalians, who number around 50,000 in Sweden.

The commission noted that from the late 1800s, Tornedalian children were prohibited from using their mother tongue, meänkieli, in school and forced to use Swedish, a ban that remained in place until the 1960s.

From the early 1900s, some 5,500 Tornedalian children were sent away to Lutheran Church boarding schools “in a nationalistic spirit”, where their language and traditional dress were prohibited.

Punishments, violence and fagging were frequent at the schools, and the Tornedalian children were stigmatised in the villages, the commission said.

“Their language and culture was made out to be something shameful … (and) their self-esteem and desire to pass on the language to the next generation was negatively affected.”

The minority has historically made a living from farming, hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, though their reindeer herding rights have been limited over the years due to complexities with the indigenous Sami people’s herding rights.

“The minority feels that they have been made invisible, that their rights over their traditional livelihoods have been taken away and they now have no power of influence,” the commission wrote.

It recommended that the meänkieli language be promoted in schools and public service broadcasting, and the state “should immediately begin the process of a public apology”.

The Scandinavian country also has a separate Truth Commission probing discriminatory policies toward the Sami people.

That report is due to be published in 2025.

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