Sweden: Moroccan-Swede singer wins Eurovision Song Contest

Sweden: Moroccan-Swede singer wins Eurovision Song Contest

 


Via NPR:

Sweden's Loreen clinched the top spot at this year's Eurovision Song Contest with her dance hit "Euphoria," pushing aside competition from a sextet of Russian grannies and a Serbian balladeer.

Juries and television viewers from across Europe awarded Loreen a total of 372 points, handing her an easy win in an event that ended in the early hours Sunday in host country Azerbaijan. Sweden will take over hosting duties next year.

Softly spoken Loreen, a 28-year-old of Moroccan-Berber descent, thanked her fans for their support.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Moroccan-Swede singer wins Eurovision Song Contest

Sweden: Proposed legislation to outlaw forced marriages

Sweden: Proposed legislation to outlaw forced marriages

Via The Local:

Anyone in Sweden who forces someone else to get married against their will can be sent to prison, according to proposed legislation presented Thursday which aims to criminalize forced marriages.

"We want to criminalize child marriage and forced marriage. It should also be a punishable offence to take a child out of the country and marry them off there," Göran Lambertz, who heads the government inquiry tasked with drawing up new legislation, told Sveriges Television (SVT).

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Proposed legislation to outlaw forced marriages

Sweden: PM slammed for 'ethnic Swedes' comment

Sweden: PM slammed for 'ethnic Swedes' comment


Via the Local:

Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is facing a storm of criticism from several quarters after using the term "ethnic Swedes" in response to a question about Sweden's high level of unemployment.

“It is not correct to describe Sweden as a country in a situation of mass-employment. If one looks at ethnic Swedes at the prime of their life, we have very low unemployment,” Reinfeldt said to a reporter from news agency TT on Monday.

(...)

Reinfeldt's choice of words soon kicked off a political firestorm with commentators on both sides of the political spectrum questioning his use of the term "ethnic Swedes" and speculating as to what he might have meant.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: PM slammed for 'ethnic Swedes' comment

Sweden: Mosques advise women not to report abusive husbands

Sweden: Mosques advise women not to report abusive husbands

Via the Local:

Six out of ten mosques in Sweden gave women advice about how to deal with spousal abuse and polygamy that contradicted Swedish law, a media investigation has revealed.

Using hidden cameras and telephone recording equipment, two women posing as abused spouses visited ten of Sweden's largest mosques as part of a report put together by Sveriges Television (SVT) investigative news programme "Uppdrag granskning".

The women then asked leaders at the mosques for advice about how to address issues such as polygamy, assault and non-consensual sex.

Six out of the ten mosques visited by the women, who had also claimed that their husbands had multiple wives, told them that they should nevertheless agree to have sex with their husbands even if they didn't want to.

Six of the mosques also advised the women against reporting spousal abuse to the police. Leaders at another mosque were divided on the issue, while women received vague advice from yet another mosque.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Mosques advise women not to report abusive husbands

Sweden: City slammed for 'special treatment' of Muslim kids

Sweden: City slammed for 'special treatment' of Muslim kids

Via the Local:

A Swedish school district has sparked outrage for striking a deal with local Muslim groups ensuring Muslim students can skip out on overnight class trips and Muslim girls don't have to be naked when showering at school.

"My first reaction after reading was total shock: how can schools so casually force children into more segregation and social exclusion?" women's and equal rights activist Bahareh Andersson wrote on the Swedish opinion website Newsmill.

Her comments came in response to reading a document outlining an agreement between education officials in Jönköping municipality and local Muslim groups ensuring special treatment for Muslim children enrolled in area schools.

"It's not only about exceptions for food, but it's also about an exception from human rights. Children learning from an early age that gender segregation is something natural and that love without marriage is a sin and immoral," wrote Andersson.

"Why do people want immigrant children to be indoctrinated with values from the Middle Ages?"

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: City slammed for 'special treatment' of Muslim kids

Sweden: 'Immigrant kids need more schooling'

Sweden: 'Immigrant kids need more schooling'

Via the Local:

The Swedish government has revealed a new directive aimed at improving immigrant students’ education and integration into Sweden, revolving around longer compulsory schooling and a shift in lesson priorities.

(...)

Key issues regarding these foreign students, who make up nine percent of Sweden’s primary school student population, revolved around how to integrate the children and raise the quality of their education by considering lesson priorities and additional compulsory schooling.

“For recently arrived children, schooling is the key to integration. Students today are older when they come to Sweden. It puts greater demands on the Swedish schools that receive them,” wrote the government in the statement.

Only 63 percent of the foreign-born students passed their final high school exams in 2010, a trend the government indicated is worsening. 

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: 'Immigrant kids need more schooling'

Malmo: Man charged with shooting immigrants

Malmo: Man charged with shooting immigrants

Via the BBC:

A Swedish man accused of shooting immigrants in the city of Malmo has been charged with three accounts of murder and 12 accounts of attempted murder.

Peter Mangs, 40, was arrested following a tip-off from a member of the public and months of investigation.

Chief prosecutor Solveig Wollstad says the motive for the attacks is not clear but most of the victims had a foreign background.

The suspect denies any wrongdoing. 

(source)

READ MORE - Malmo: Man charged with shooting immigrants

Sweden: 'Smarter' immigrants coming

Sweden: 'Smarter' immigrants coming


Via the Local:

Non-European immigrants are arriving in Sweden with increasingly higher levels of education, according to a new study, although fewer highly-educated immigrants are arriving from Europe and the Nordic countries.

While only 31 percent of immigrants who arrived in Sweden prior to 1991 had some form of post-secondary education, 44 percent of immigrants who moved to Sweden after 2002 have some form of higher education.

The figures come from a comprehensive survey of the level of education of people in Sweden carried out by Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån – SCB). 

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: 'Smarter' immigrants coming

Sweden: Six convicted in 'honour' beating with metal rods

Sweden: Six convicted in 'honour' beating with metal rods

For more on this story, see here.

Via the Local:

Six men in Hallsberg, central Sweden, have been convicted and sentenced to prison after the severe honour-related beating of a 19-year-old with metal rods at a gym.

(...)

According to the prosecutor, the men wanted to protect the daughter in their family after an alleged kidnapping attempt.

The young woman’s father was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to four years in prison.

His three sons were all convicted of attempted murder and two will serve time in prison, two received 6 year sentences and the third 5.5 years. The two sons with the longer sentence will also be deported from Sweden after having served their time and not allowed back for at least ten years.

The man who owned the gym where the beating took place was also convicted to 2.5 years in prison while his 19-year-old son will serve one year.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Six convicted in 'honour' beating with metal rods

Sweden: Seven convicted in brutal gang rape case

Sweden: Seven convicted in brutal gang rape case

Via the Local:

Seven of the eight men charged with the aggravated rape of a woman at a housing facility for asylum seekers in Småland, southeastern Sweden, last year were convicted and sentenced to prison on Wednesday in the Eksjö District Court.

(...)

Prosecutors labelled the incident as a planned attack. All seven were therefore convicted of aggravated rape as they carried out the attack together.

Six of the convicted men are Afghan citizens and will be deported from Sweden and not allowed back for at least fifteen years after they have served their sentence.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Seven convicted in brutal gang rape case

Gothenburg: Police fear anti-immigrant protests following attack

Gothenburg: Police fear anti-immigrant protests following attack

Via the Local:

The attack, which occurred in Kortedala Torg on March 18th, has left other residents embittered and calling for action, and police are concerned that talks of a demonstration against violence may boil over into an anti-immigrant protest.

"We see that racist websites blame foreigners in general after what happened. It makes me angry, and we need to monitor developments carefully," said the police's Bertil Claesson to Aftonbladet.

"Protests against violence are good, a sign of health, but we don't want it to become a protest out of hatred."

(source)

Several boys hanging around the square where the attack took place told Aftonbladet that everybody was affected by the incident. "It's not right what they did, if they did it. We've certainly noticed that prejudice against all of us immigrant increased after it."

READ MORE - Gothenburg: Police fear anti-immigrant protests following attack

Malmö: "Sweden Democrats have infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push their hate of Muslims"

Malmö: "Sweden Democrats have infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push their hate of Muslims"

Via the Local:

The letter comes following an interview published on Thursday in the liberal-leaning magazine NEO in which Reepalu discussed the "strong ties" between the Jewish community and the Sweden Democrats, a political party with a clear anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim line which has its roots in Sweden's neo-Nazi movement.

According to Reepalu, "Sweden Democrats have infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push their hate of Muslims".

The statements were immediately dismissed by Fred Kahn, chair of the Jewish Community in Malmö (Judiska församlingen) as "pure fantasy".

Reepalu, a Social Democrat, quickly backtracked on Thursday, admitting to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) daily that he "had no basis" for his claims and that he "shouldn't have said it that way".

(source)

READ MORE - Malmö: "Sweden Democrats have infiltrated the Jewish community in order to push their hate of Muslims"

Sweden: Court disallows teen's Sharia marriage

Sweden: Court disallows teen's Sharia marriage

Via the Local:

A Swedish court has ruled that a 17-year-old girl's marriage by a Sharia court in the West Bank is invalid in Sweden, overturning a lower court's decision.

The girl, who is now 19-years-old, was married in June 2010 in a Sharia court located in the West Bank town of Hebron, ten days before her 18th birthday, according to Swedish court documents.

When she and her husband moved to Sweden they sought to have their marriage registered with the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket).

But the agency denied the couple's application, arguing the marriage couldn't be registered in Sweden because the woman hadn't turned 18 at the time of the wedding.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Court disallows teen's Sharia marriage

Sweden: Sweden Democrats face 'honour violence' ad fury

Sweden: Sweden Democrats face 'honour violence' ad fury

Via the Local:

The Sweden Democrats’ Women's Association (SD-Kvinnor) presented a new internet commercial last week, meant to “highlight honour related violence”, an issue they feel is not getting enough media attention.

“Today when we speak about equality we speak a lot about equal pay and affirmative action, but there are women out there who are dying, who can’t leave their homes,” said SD Kvinnor spokesperson Therese Borg to The Local.

The film, which was released to coincide with International Women’s Day last Thursday, shows a young immigrant woman who is beaten by what appears to be members of her family and other relatives while a mournful tune is played.

The violent scenes are concluded by a blonde and pale-skinned woman wiping up blood from the floor.

The narrative, which is all in rhyme, poses questions such as ”what if tolerance is just naivety” and ”what if culture kills”.

The film was quickly slammed by influential feminists like former leader of the Left Party and later of the feminist party Feminist Initiative (Feministiskt Initiativ, FI) Gudrun Schyman.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Sweden Democrats face 'honour violence' ad fury

Sweden: More illiterates at Swedish language courses

Sweden: More illiterates at Swedish language courses

Via Stockholm News:

An increasing number of the students at the Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) courses are illiterates according to the public radio broadcaster SR International. Compared with 2006, the number of students with only one or two years of elementary school has doubled. However, according to SR International, the SFI courses are not adapted to this new reality.

One example is an SFI-course in Tensta, northwest Stockholm, where one out of four students has small or none school experience. Most of them are women and they have big difficulties to manage in everyday life.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: More illiterates at Swedish language courses

Sweden: Sweden Democrats in bid to 'help' immigrants leave

Sweden: Sweden Democrats in bid to 'help' immigrants leave

Via The Local:

The Sweden Democrats' youth wing wants to entice jobless immigrants to leave the country by offering them "goodie bags" complete with tips on how to facilitate immigrants' departure.

The project, entitled “There’s no place like home” ('Borta bra men hemma bäst'), is designed to allow immigrants the opportunity to better understand the options and possibilities available to help them return to their home soil.

“We are convinced that among the many immigrants in Sweden who have ended up in alienation and social isolation the dream of being able to go back to their home land and reunite with their countrymen is still alive,” wrote the Sweden Democrat youth organization (Sverigedemokratisk Ungdom - SDU) in a statement.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Sweden Democrats in bid to 'help' immigrants leave

Gothenburg: Christian-Muslim couple from Kosovo hiding from immigration police

Gothenburg: Christian-Muslim couple from Kosovo hiding from immigration police

Via SR:

A couple from Kosovo are living in hiding in Gothenburg, and say they are willing to do so for the rest of their lives in order to stay in Sweden. Their asylum request has been rejected. According to the Immigration Service, there are close to 5,000 people in Sweden who were refused asylum but cannot be found to be deported.

The woman is pregnant and says it is diffiuclt, every day they think of the fact that their child will have no future.

The woman says she had been married off by her family to a man she didn't love. She was not allowed to marry the man she loved since she was Muslim and he was Christian. "The rules are that Muslims marry Muslims and Christians marry Christians," they say.

Therefore they decided to flee together to Sweden and Gothenburg. For now they're hiding from the police, and are hoping for a change to the asylum laws. Until then, they hope the Church can find them an apartment where they can hide.

READ MORE - Gothenburg: Christian-Muslim couple from Kosovo hiding from immigration police

Sweden: Brother accused of beating, forcing sister to strip in 'honor crime'

Sweden: Brother accused of beating, forcing sister to strip in 'honor crime'

Via Skanskan.se:

A 29-year old resident of LUnd in southern Sweden was charged with threats, coercion, abuse and molestation for beating his little sister (18) in the family home and then forcing her to undress down to her underwear in a nearby playground. The police and prosecution are viewing the incident as honor-related violence.


The brother gave his sister several blows to the face and kicked her in the hip. He threatened to break her arm if she didn't give him her cellphone and told her he would be willing to sit in jail to see her dead.

The woman had been engaged to a man in her parents' homeland, but had left him last year because he beat her.

The woman's mother defends her son and condemns her daughter's actions. she told the police that her daughter had ruined her life because ten police officers had come to the family home because of her.

The brother was in police custody for several days last June. He had confesses to the crimes, but has since then changed his approach and claims innocence. He says his sister had received her injuries, which were documented in a medical center, when she jumped off a roof.

The case was reported to the police by the principal of the sister's school.

Three of the sister's girlfriends will be testifying as witnesses. two of them were there when the brother forced his sister to undress. The brother had said his sister was no longer worth the clothing and jewelry she had received from their parents. His sister did what he wanted for fear of being beaten, but she refused to give up her mobile phone and stuffed it into her bra.

During the conflict the phone rang, which made the brother even more upset and he twisted his sister's arm.

READ MORE - Sweden: Brother accused of beating, forcing sister to strip in 'honor crime'

Sweden: 30 Swedes on Jihad in Somalia

Sweden: 30 Swedes on Jihad in Somalia

Swedish newspaper DN reports that the Swedish security service Säpo is closely monitoring the situation in Sweden, now that the Somali al-Shabaab has officially joined al-Qaeda.

About 30 Swedes have gone to Somalia for Jihad or Jihad training. Säpo says the trend is increasing and that a a dozen others have gone to other conflict areas. The most famous al-Shabaab site is run from Sweden by a Muslim convert from Gothenburg.

Swedish journalist Per Gudmundson points out the timeline in his blog:
May 2009: SvD reports that 20 Swedes had gone to Somalia for Jihad and that a dozen were in Somalia at the time.
October 2009: Aftonbladet reports a dozen Swedes had gone to Afghanistan/Pakistan
December 2010: DN reports about 30 Swedes had gone to Pakistan and Somalia in the past five years.
February 2012: DN reports about 30 Swedes have gone to Somalia and a dozen more to other conflict zones.

In other words, in the past two and a half years, about 20 Swedes have joined the Jihad in Somali and Pakistan.

READ MORE - Sweden: 30 Swedes on Jihad in Somalia

Sweden: Children of immigrant parents more likely to develop autism with intellectual disability

Sweden: Children of immigrant parents more likely to develop autism with intellectual disability

Via News Medical:

The study, which is published in the scientific periodical The British Journal of Psychiatry shows that children of immigrant parents, particularly from countries of low human development, are disproportionately likely to develop autism with intellectual disability, a connection that appears to be related to the timing of migration rather than complications in childbirth. Children, whose mothers migrated just before or during pregnancy, ran the highest risk of all.

(source)

READ MORE - Sweden: Children of immigrant parents more likely to develop autism with intellectual disability