The Tidö Agreement opens the way for abuse of the personal freedom of many Swedes
Of:
Gellert Tamas
PUBLISHED: TODAY 05.00
This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.
Sweden's government, under the leadership of Ulf Kristersson.
Sweden's government, under the leadership of Ulf Kristersson.
Photo: Lotte Fernvall
CULTURE
"I will now form a government for the whole of Sweden", said Ulf Kristersson in his government declaration. But the Tidö agreement shows a completely different reality. This will perhaps be most clearly through the new government's "remigration policy", the main demand of the Sweden Democrats for three decades.
At the annual meeting in Norrköping in February 1994, the Sweden Democrats voted to recreate the "homogeneous population composition" which was claimed to have been such an "invaluable asset" for Sweden. The party newspaper SD-Kuriren summarized: "all ethnic foreigners who came here after 1970 must be repatriated so that Sweden can become Swedish again".
The Sweden Democrats thus adopted probably the most brutal proposal in Swedish political history. Between 1970 and 1994, a total of 1,117,445 people immigrated. It was these more than a million people, most of them Swedish citizens, that the annual meeting unanimously voted yes to "pass" out of the country.
Two years later, party leader Mikael Jansson clarified: "We are not in favor of any voluntary return. We are for these people to be repatriated, those who have asylum immigrants from foreign cultures after 1970.”
This has now become the basis for the policy described on page 41 of the Tidö agreement under the heading "Review of incentive structures for voluntary repatriation".
The first task will be to define who will be leaving the country: "An investigation is being added into how re-migration can be greatly stimulated and with other means increased in the case of people who are resident in Sweden and who have connections to another country and who want to re-migrate. "
While the 1994 Sweden Democratic general meeting decision was based on a concrete year, today's writings are more general - and thus also more insidious. The target group is "people who are not integrated into Swedish society in terms of self-sufficiency, language or other cultural factors".
The fact that the whole idea of a state "return migration policy" probably conflicts with a number of basic statutory civil rights must be resolved by changing these laws. The investigation is tasked with "proposing appropriate constitutional amendments". The work must be carried out quickly. The investigation will be added next spring and "legislation and implementation of proposed measures must be completed during the mandate period 2022-2026".
The money must be taken from the aid budget, something Kristersson also highlighted in his government statement. The new government will not only depart from the one percent target, the entire policy must be reformulated to "focus aid policy to be a tool to counter irregular migration, increase return and contribute to effective work for voluntary re-migration".
A large part of the Swedish people will feel both exposed and directly harassed by our authorities. That this is precisely the goal is something that Åkesson openly admits
The countries that do not accept the "voluntary" returnees must be pressured to think again, via both Swedish and international sanctions. The aid policy will henceforth "act for the EU to freeze aid, and also limit the possibilities for visa freedom, or visas in general, for third countries that do not cooperate in matters of return and readmission of their own citizens".
That a political leadership works for parts of its population to leave their own country is of course as reprehensible as it is socially destabilizing. The question is also what guarantees are there against rapid radicalization when it is obvious that it is the Sweden Democrats who dictate politics.
Last year, Jimmie Åkesson explained how he envisioned the re-migration policy in practice: "I do not rule out that in some cases it could be about also looking for people who have not found their place in Sweden."
That scores of Swedish citizens would feel deeply offended, afraid and directly threatened is welcomed by Åkesson. "I have no problem if there is pressure on people who have not established themselves here, who are not part of Sweden, who live segregated in a suburb," he explains.
The new re-migration policy must also be placed in connection with other proposed measures, not least regarding the "internal control of foreigners". Ten years ago, the so-called Reva project, with the goal of streamlining the rejection of asylum seekers who have received rejection decisions, was met with strong protests against what many experienced as deeply offensive identity checks.
The Tidö agreement will not only restore this policy, but also greatly increase the volume. It is proposed that the police be given the right to demand identification with "consideration of circumstances which, in terms of experience, lead to more unlicensed persons being discovered". It is an almost Orwellian euphemism for the very racial profiling that the Reva project was criticized for.
The police are also proposed to have expanded opportunities to "take care of and empty digital media, body search [and] examination of luggage". Furthermore, the possibility of a DNA sample must be investigated. In addition, an investigation must "investigate and propose constitutional amendments regarding expanded powers for the Police Authority in internal immigration control to, for example, take care of persons who cannot prove their identity and permit-compliant stay in Sweden probable".
Kristersson's rule, if the policy is implemented, will rather remind of the darkest chapters in Sweden's history; the 1920s of racial biological thinking
All Swedish citizens who are not light enough in complexion thus risk being stopped by the police who have the authority to physically search you on the spot, go through your mobile phone and computer, and swab the inside of your mouth for a DNA test. If you also happened to forget your ID documents, the police have the right to immediately detain you pending a full investigation.
It is hard not to see the abuses of personal freedom that the new government constellation opens up for. A large part of the Swedish people will feel both exposed and directly harassed by our authorities. That this is precisely the goal is something that Åkesson openly admits. By making it "harder to get access to the social insurance systems" and with "more internal controls on foreigners", we want to create a system that contributes to "people wanting to return to a greater degree", Åkesson sums up.
That the new government chooses to make Sweden Democratic politics its own shows how quickly and thoroughly liberals, Christian Democrats and moderates have been radicalized.
Every country's political leadership, through its authorities, has a fundamental obligation to defend and protect its population. The Swedish constitution clearly states that "public power must be exercised with respect for the equal value of all people and for the freedom and dignity of the individual person", especially when it comes to "ensuring the right to work, housing and education and working for social care and security ".
Kristersson's rule, if the policy is implemented, will rather remind of the darkest chapters in Sweden's history; the 1920s of racial biological thinking.
Then as now, it was about creating the conditions for a "voluntary" return, via an active state power and its authorities
In 1923, the Lösdriveriutredningen, about the situation of the Roma in Sweden, submitted its final report. The investigators claimed that integration of the country's Roma is not possible and that it is therefore necessary to "one way or another get the Gypsies out of the country". The problem was, from the investigators' point of view, that most Roma were Swedish citizens, which meant that the state could not just throw them out.
The proposed "solution" was approached eerily like the Tidö agreement. Then as now, it was about creating the conditions for a "voluntary" return, via an active state power and its authorities.
"Since most of them are probably Swedish subjects and in any case their citizenship in another country can hardly be proven, their disappearance from the country cannot be achieved in any other way than by placing such strong restrictions on their freedom of movement that they find with their own advantage compatible with leaving the country and emigrating to a country with more favorable conditions for them.”
Almost to the day one hundred years after a Swedish government inquiry suggested state-sanctioned harassment of a group of Swedish citizens, with the goal of getting them to leave the country, Sweden has a government proposing much the same policy.
This is what Kristersson claims is a policy "for all of Sweden".
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