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Sweden interrupts Uighur deportations to China

Swedish authorities said they had temporarily halted the deportation of Muslim minority Uighurs to China due to concerns over the situation there.

Published: 24 September 2018 15:21 CEST

Sweden interrupts Uighur deportations to China

A group of Uighur in Thailand after they were rescued from human trafficking. Photo: Sumeth Panpetch/AP/TT

“Information from several human rights organizations indicates that the situation for Uighurs has deteriorated” in the western region of Xinjiang, the Swedish Migration Agency said in a statement obtained by AFP.

The decision also concerns “other minority groups from Xinjiang who have received expulsion orders,” a spokesperson for the agency told AFP.

The authorities did not give any details of how many people might be affected by the decision, but in early September the Swedish Migration Agency announced it had suspended the deportation of a Uighur family to China after their asylum request was rejected.

Xinjiang is home to around 22 million inhabitants, almost half of whom are Uighurs of Turkish origin. Many of them say they are discriminated against by China's Han majority.

Human rights organizations around the world have accused China of detaining massive numbers of people in re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination.

Amnesty International said in a report on Monday that Beijing had rolled out “an intensifying government campaign of mass internment, intrusive surveillance, political indoctrination and forced cultural assimilation”.

Beijing has rejected UN estimates that more than a million members of Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps.

China says its restrictions on Muslim minorities, including ubiquitous police checkpoints and video surveillance, are intended to combat what it calls Islamic extremism and separatist elements in the far western province.

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'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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