Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

EXTREMISM

Swedish extremism hotline prepares to open

A Swedish helpline for families worried that a loved one may be on the path to radicalization will open on November 16th, said the Red Cross.

Published: 29 October 2015 07:00 CET
Swedish extremism hotline prepares to open
An extremism helpline is being set up in Sweden. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

The Swedish Red Cross confirmed on Wednesday that it would set up a national hotline for extremism, which The Local wrote about earlier this year.

The announcement comes barely a week after two people were killed in a racially-motivated attack on a school in Trollhättan that shocked the nation.

“We are launching this hotline at the request of the National Coordinator Against Extremism. We want to help the families, the friends of people tempted by radical extremism,” Swedish Red Cross president Anna Carlstedt told the AFP news agency.

The aim of the hotline is not to identify potential extremists, whether they are sympathizers of radical Islam, the extreme left or the hard-right, but to offer support to “all those who suspect a loved one is being radicalized,” Carlstedt added.

Several other countries, including France and Britain, have set up similar free phone numbers to address concerns about radicalization.

Sweden is still reeling from the attack in the western town of Trollhättan last Thursday, in which a teaching assistant and a pupil were killed by a sword-wielding attacker with apparent far-right, anti-immigrant sympathies.

And Swedish security police Säpo reported earlier this month that 125 Swedes are currently believed to be fighting for terror groups such as the Islamic State (also known as Isis or IS) in Syria and Iraq.

READ ALSO: Pregnant Swedish teen freed from Isis captivity

FAR-RIGHT

German far-right scene grows as ‘extremists infiltrate lockdown protests’

Germany's far-right has grown more radical and violent during the Covid-19 pandemic, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Tuesday, presenting a report on threats to the country's democratic order.

Published: 15 June 2021 14:39 CEST
German far-right scene grows as 'extremists infiltrate lockdown protests'
A Reichsbürger demonstration in Potsdam in November 2020. credit: dpa | Christophe Gateau

Calling right-wing extremism a “major problem”, Seehofer told reporters that the scene had often hijacked more moderate protests against government measures to combat the coronavirus.

“We have to be particularly concerned about the fact that the mainstream demonstrators didn’t draw a line between themselves and the far-right ones,” he said.

The 2020 report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic security watchdog, found a 3.8-percent increase in the number of people considered right-wing extremists last year, to around 33,300 people.

About 40 percent of those people – 13,300 – were considered “violent, prepared to use violence or violence-supporting”.

Seehofer noted that although rallies organised by the far right were often called off by the authorities, its supporters infiltrated demonstrations that were permitted to take place.

Crimes linked to right-wing extremism rose five percent last year to more than 22,000, the deadliest of which was a racist mass shooting in the western city of Hanau that left nine people dead.

For the first time, the annual report included a section on the so-called New Right, describing extremists trying to influence mainstream discourse with “pseudo-intellectual” arguments intended to incite racial hatred and explode taboos.

Seehofer has repeatedly described right-wing extremism as the biggest threat to German security and banned several groups with ties to the scene.

READ MORE:

A particular focus has been the around 1,000 so-called Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich), who reject Germany’s democratic institutions.

The report also highlighted recurring problems of right-wing extremism among police and the military.

Last week the state of Hesse said it was dissolving Frankfurt’s elite police force after several officers were accused of participating in far-right online chats and swapping neo-Nazi symbols.

Violence by the far left, with attacks against security forces, neo-Nazis and companies, particularly property managers amid anger over rising rents, saw a significant increase as well, to 1,237 cases last year, up from 921 in 2019.   

SHOW COMMENTS