Mick Hartley

From the Weekly Standard:

"I often use Sweden as a deterring example.”

The words are not those of Donald Trump, but Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In an interview with Swedish public television in January, the former NATO secretary general and Danish prime minister described Sweden's immigration policy as a failure and a warning to other countries. But it was President Trump's unclear and slightly confused reference to Sweden during his February 18 rally in Florida that has turned attention to the Scandinavian country of 10 million and the details of its migrant experience. Sweden has accepted more refugees per capita in recent years than any other country in Europe….

But there are, in fact, good reasons for Americans to care about Sweden's problems. First, because Sweden's failure to integrate its immigrants, in line with Rasmussen's observation, carries lessons for other countries; second, because Swedish news reporting and public discourse on immigration and integration are restricted by taboos. Swedish journalists and public figures who have been outspoken about the problems—and transgressed what the Swedes call the "opinion corridor"—have risked being labeled xenophobes or racists.

This peculiarity of Swedish public discourse has often allowed politicians and public authorities to deny the problems caused by the country's migration and integration policies, without being seriously challenged. The Swedish foreign ministry, for instance, launched a PR campaign in response to the debate following Donald Trump's remarks about the country. It tweeted last week, as part of the campaign:

Does Sweden actually have 'No-Go Zones'? No, we don't.

You think that Swedish police have lost control? The 'no-go zones' are in fact 'go-go zones'. #FactCheck

But no-go zones cannot simply be dismissed as a myth. Gordon Grattidge, chairman of a Swedish ambulance trade union, explained to me that no-go zones are a reality for paramedics in Sweden. There are areas where first responders can't enter without police escort. Grattidge's assessment is that ambulances are forced to retreat from such areas on a weekly basis.

Yet the government's use of taxpayer money to deny the existence of no-go zones has not been met with protests from Swedish journalists….

On several occasions, foreign journalists reporting from Swedish areas of social exclusion have been driven out by violent youths. When the Norwegian public TV network NRK tried to report from a housing project area in Stockholm, its team was forced to leave the neighborhood under duress. Australian 60 Minutes visited Rinkeby in March this year, only to have its camera crew attacked by rock throwers. "We've all been assaulted and insulted," the reporter declared on air.

Journalists have also documented how religious minorities are being persecuted in immigrant neighborhoods. When Swedish public television accompanied a Somali woman who has converted to Christianity to Rinkeby—the scene of last month's riots—she was immediately threatened because of her conversion and forced to run.

And here she is - Mona Walter, interviewed by Canadian journalist Ezra Levant:

The main points that come across: the Islam she encountered in Sweden was a good deal more hard-line than the Islam she knew in Somalia (she left in 1994, before Al-Shabaab and all the rest) and, as the Standard article says, the liberal Swedish establishment seem to have absolutely no interest in anyone critical of Islam. As far as they're concerned, criticism of Islam is racism and "Islamophobia", and must be suppressed.

[Thanks Dom]