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Neo-Nazi group could be banned from Sweden’s annual politics festival

Politicians on the Swedish island of Gotland want to ban an extremist neo-Nazi group from next year's Almedalen Week, the country's annual politics festival.

Published: 25 October 2017 17:19 CEST
Neo-Nazi group could be banned from Sweden's annual politics festival
Members of the NMR at Almedalen this year, where they handed out their publication Nordfront. Photo: Janerik Henriksson / TT

The neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) was granted permission to rent land in Visby during this year's edition of the event, for the first time. The Gotland municipality later made a U-turn and asked the police to stop the neo-Nazi group from attending, labelling their earlier decision a “mistake”.

However, the police granted the NRM permission to attend, citing Sweden's constitutional freedom of assembly.

Now Gotland's politicians want to stop the group from participating in the 2018 Almedalen Week, by referring to the Public Order Act.

“There is no other way. We will do everything we can, because we do not want them here. It is catastrophic for the Almedalen Week that [other] organizations and associations do not dare to come here,” the chairperson of the event's technical committee, Tommy Gardell, told TT.

According to Gardell, multiple groups decided not to attend the event after NMR's involvement this year, and he said the group's presence “limits freedom of expression for others”. What's more, some of the group's activists destroyed other organizations' flags and disrupted several parties' events by shouting slogans and slurs.

Gardell hopes that the municipality will be able to refuse to rent land to groups like the NMR on this basis, without going against the constitutional 'principal of objectivity' which states public authorities must treat everyone equally.

Authorities have been working on a plan to oust the NMR from next year's event since summer, but have come up against numerous obstacles. It is illegal to refuse to rent land to individual groups, and nor can the group be banned under anti-terror laws, so filing a municipal veto is the latest tactic.

Almedalen is organized by the eight parties that make up Sweden's parliament, but it is the Gotland region which rents out the land used by participating groups.

This summer, the NMR rented land close to the harbour in Visby, the island's medieval capital, but they were not part of the official programme, which is decided by the parliamentary parties.

While some groups boycotted the festival due to the NMR's presence, others protested the group at the event, including with an art installation which saw a pile of shoes left outside their tents, representing the genocide carried out by Nazis during the Holocaust.

READ ALSO: Diversity protesters march against neo-Nazis at Swedish politics week

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POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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