The duplicity of the political government of the Swedish State is illustrated in its denunciations of police repression in Nicaragua. The government of Nicaragua does not need me to defend it and that is not my purpose here. My only intention is to illustrate yet another example of the hypocrisy of the political government of the Swedish State in matters of Human Rights.
According to a write up regarding a EU resolution about Nicaragua the Swedish State Regeringslansliet stated in 2023:
"The already serious situation in Nicaragua has continued to deteriorate in recent years with regard to democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. On 21 January 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted conclusions strongly condemning the repression of the press and civil society and the use of anti-terrorist laws to suppress dissent in Nicaragua. The Council stressed that demonstrations since April 2018 have been brutally suppressed by security forces and pro-government armed groups, resulting in several hundred deaths and injuries and the arrest of hundreds of citizens, characterized by widespread irregularities and arbitrariness in detention and judicial proceedings. The Council recalled the need to ensure accountability for all crimes committed since April 2018, regardless of who committed them. The Council also called on the Government of Nicaragua to resume a meaningful and results-oriented dialogue, including on the adoption of electoral reforms."
As it concerns "rule of law and respect for Human Rights"; allegedly that situation in a democracy requires that the police be apolitical. The Police in Sweden are a political actor, and not the impartial public authority it claims to be:
Politicians from the Moderate and Christian Democrat parties mollycoddle the Police and that emboldens the Police to engage in repressive and abusive behaviour towards migrants and other marginalized social groups, such as the Swedish homeless or Romanian Romer. After the 2022 election, Swedish Police have openly become the informal paramilitary wing of the neoconservative Moderate party. A situation analogous to the relationship that existed between the ZANU-PF militia and the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
As I wrote elsewhere in this weblog: The "flight risk" loophole is the universal excuse that Swedish Police use to negate the Human Right to presumption of innocence to persons of a migrant background. Swedish jails, prisons and detention centers are currently overfilled with migrant inmates whose Human Right to presumption of innocence has been collectively and systematically violated under the said pretext. I was interned at the remand prison at Ystad, Skåne for three weeks in January 2023 BEFORE being tried, under the excuse of being an alleged "flight risk"; I was interned in a prison environment while being in a legal state of innocence. I have not been compensated for this, even though the rules say that a person is to be compensated for time spent in unlawful deprivation of liberty (no one is compensated as a result of the "flight risk" loophole, I am told). On 1 April 2018 new European rules allegedly strengthening the guarantee that anyone suspected or accused in criminal proceedings is innocent until proven guilty came into effect; but Sweden ignores these rules by abusing the "flight risk" loophole its Justice Ministry concocted in 2019.
It takes gall for Swedish government political flacks at the Regeringskansliet to cite EU council resolutions sanctioning Nicaragua, when EU rules regarding presumption of innocence are systematically violated in the Swedish court system, which is rigged against migrant defendants.
As it concerns charges of "repression of the press" and "use of anti-terrorist laws to suppress dissent" in Nicaragua; I pointed out elsewhere in this weblog about Sweden, that: Legislation has been introduced by the Swedish Parliament in recent years that not only restricts freedom of expression in Sweden (journalists are penalized for writing against Swedish State interests), but also gives more powers to the state's repressive arm (Police), as well as toughens the punishment for those who in one way or another do not accept the state's use of violence for repressive purposes. These laws introduce the dubious concept of "blue light sabotage". Anyone in Sweden who interferes with the police's general surveillance activities directed against individual persons in connection with a political demonstration or strike action can be convicted of "blue light sabotage". In effect civil disobedience is made illegal. The penal code does not allow for fines in cases of "blue light sabotage"; instead for those who are suspected of seriously hindering the police's repressive or surveillance operations, a prison sentence of a maximum of four years awaits, and if the crime is judged to be serious (at the whim of the Police, of course), the penalty can be at least eighteen years.
The Swedish Security Police (Säkerhetspolisen) enforces a system of surveillance and repression of persons deemed a "threat" to the security of the Swedish State or the interests of the Swedish State. Historically, the radical left has been a constant target for repression and other abuses for its perceived "lack of loyalty" to the Swedish political-economy. Persons are arbitrarily declared "threats to security" at the whim of the Säkerhetspolisen without basis in any type of objective and impartial procedural evidentiary process. In April 2023, the Swedish government increased the budget for the security police (Säkerhetspolisen or SÄPO); which also functions as the political police of the Swedish State, thus increasing the scope and intensity of potential repression against those deemed "disloyal" or "security threats" at the subjective whim of Säkerhetspolisen operatives.
About demonstrations "being brutally suppressed" by security forces in Nicaragua, the Swedish State is hardly in a position to pontificate:
Amnesty International reports that: "In October (2022), the District Court of Solna convicted 12 climate activists, who had carried out an act of civil disobedience, of sabotage. This harsh charge raised concerns regarding the proportionality of restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly as similar earlier acts had been met with less serious charges."
In 2013, Swedish police raided and arrested persons in more than a dozen addresses in the cities of Eskilstuna and Stockholm as part of "Project Eskil", a Swedish Police effort to harass the revolutionary Left. The harassment tactics of "Project Eskil" were similar to those deployed by the FBI's COUNTERINTELPRO program in the 1960s and 1970s against the radical left in the United States. Several people connected with the revolutionary left organization Revolutionära Fronten were arrested. I was an active supporter of Revolutionära Fronten in 2011-13. I was not a member, but I supported the work of its activists. In Swedish media and political commentary, Revolutionära Fronten was labelled a "gang of left-wing hooligans" and this campaign of systematic character assassination served as a pretext for police harassment of this political group.
As it concerns charges of "irregularities and arbitrariness in detention and judicial proceedings"; I have pointed out elsewhere in this weblog that: Swedish police and security guards are repressive and abusive towards people of migrant backgrounds on a daily basis in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö (where large communities of persons with migrant backgrounds reside). Case in point was the REVA program instituted in 2013 to hunt down and catch undocumented persons in the Stockholm Metro (Tunnelbanan) and in the Malmö metropolitan area. Persons where stopped, searched and questioned in public at random by Swedish Police "because they looked immigrant" on the basis of overt racial profiling. These racist abuses of immigrant persons by Swedish Police where documented by the activist group Aktion mot Deportation at the time. Furthermore, the human right to presumption of innocence (which is allegedly guaranteed by European Union conventions binding on Sweden), is systematically violated in context of prosecutions.
In 2023, under the pretext that there exists an "immigrant crime wave" (in itself an overt racist generalization promoted in the Swedish State and private fake "free press" media); there is the systematic violation and negation of presumption of innocence for persons with migrant backgrounds in the Swedish court system through the systematic abuse of the "flight risk" loophole by prosecutors and Police. Migrants (especially those of an African and/or Arabic background), are regularly harassed, arrested, imprisoned and sentenced on arbitrary grounds by private security guards, Police, prosecutors, and courts in Sweden. The evidence is in the overpopulated Swedish prisons, jails and detention centers which are filled with inmates of migrant backgrounds (mostly Arabic / Middle Eastern).
The expression of radical and fundamental oppositional criticism against racist immigration laws, xenophobic practices and repressive Police abuses against persons of an immigrant background are systematically filtered out of the Swedish "free press" State and establishment media.
References:
https://www.regeringen.se/regeringens-politik/utrikes--och-sakerhetspolitik/sanktioner/sanktioner-mot-nicaragua/ (write up deleted from website) ***Read Backup Copy: HERE
"Steg för steg går vi mot en allt mer repressiv stat." https://proletaren.se/artikel/varning-polisstat
postscript:
In a comment posted in context of a discussion on the recent DISCORDGATE scandal at the World Socialist Website I wrote that: "Journalism" and "the free press" are euphemisms for propaganda that services capitalism and Western military aggression. When New York Times editor Bill Keller stated: “Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity," he was being honest about how propaganda works in the West, it does so by omission. They crop the picture. When you crop the picture, you tell a lie. This method of propaganda by omission is contextualized by what Noam Chomsky once stated: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...." Western propaganda crops the picture, simplifies the narrative and limits the scope of discussion. They call this "freedom of the press". One could also apply the maxim of Joseph Goebbels to supplement the statement by Bill Keller: "A lie told once remains a lie, a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth..." If you repeat the cropped and simplified narrative over and over again it becomes "truth". The New York Times and Pravda mirrored each other during the cold war in this way.
The Swedish corporate and State establishment media are hardly representative of a "free press", not unlike other media actors in Western countries who entitle themselves to judge others on Human Rights while they themselves violate them.
