UK media remain silent on Sweden protests: Carol Gould Press TV has conducted an interview with Carol Gould, author and political analyst from London. Press TV: Well let’s look at this. Has this anger been simmering below the surface for a while and what would you say are the main reasons for the riots? Gould: Well first of all let me say one really interesting aspect of this discussion is that I’m a very very dedicated journalist and broadcaster and I pay attention to what is happening in the world in all my waking hours and in the past week, a week and a half, I can tell you that there has been virtually no coverage whatsoever in Great Britain on any of the networks of what’s going on in Sweden. I will tell you this because I think it will be of interest to your viewers. I found out about it because a friend in Spain texted me a week ago and said what’s going on in Sweden, can you explain it? Well of course I’ve been doing research trying to find out what is happening. I do believe that what’s happening in Sweden is very similar to what has been happening in Britain. We have a very high immigrant population, a very high Muslim population, but Sweden has taken in more refugees from Syria, Iraq and Somalia than any other country in Europe and I think that is a very important point because Sweden has welcomed hundreds of thousands of people as refugees, as asylum seekers, but the problem is that the people who have come in the past five to ten years - because the Iraq war started over ten years ago - are not fitting in with Swedish society. They are just not integrating. There was a comment made in today’s Guardian in the UK. It’s the first article about Sweden saying that a huge majority, 95 percent of immigrant families even whose children are born in Sweden and speak Swedish have no Swedish friends. All of their friends, their social circle, is within their own community. I could also say that one could blame the Swedish community because perhaps I don’t live there so I don’t know how unwelcoming they are, but there does seem to be a very strong social divide. This situation’s not helped by reports that the police have been calling the young people, who have been rioting because they are unhappy about their situation; calling them monkeys and Negros. So that inflames the situation and there seems to be a tremendous divide between what I would call the indigenous Swedish population and the more recent arrivals and even amongst the young people who are born there, who are Swedish by birth, but just who are not integrating with the whole Swedish population added to the fact there is high youth unemployment. Press TV: You said that you are a journalist and you followed the news, but this is not something that is being talked about in the UK. Why is that the case, why do you think it hasn’t been mentioned in your country? Gould: There are several reasons. In the past 10 days there have been several huge international stories. The British media have been covering the tornado in Oklahoma - absolutely non-stop coverage of the disaster in Oklahoma. And then in the past week we have had the first ever murder of a British soldier on British soil by a Muslim - allegedly. I have to say allegedly by a Muslim because the footage shows two young men who are praising Allah and saying Allah-o Akbar and saying that they wanted to kill this soldier because he represents the murder of their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan and Iraq. That has been a huge story in the UK. It’s the first time ever that this has happened. Soldiers were killed by the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, but nothing like this has ever happened. But I’m not making excuses for the British media. To me it is puzzling that the British media have not been covering the events in Sweden. I haven’t even seen anything on CNN, which is broadcast in the UK, but comes from America. So I think it is possible that because there is a lot of simmering unrest in Britain, because of the events of the past week, whoever puts pressure on the media here, whether it’s Downing Street or whomever, they don’t want to generate even more unrest amongst an already unhappy immigrant population in the UK. There are parallels to be drawn. Your guest just now mentioned that Sweden has lowered taxes for the rich, but also lowered welfare benefits. When you think that Sweden still has the highest tax rate - 48 percent - of any country in the world, that is incredibly high but it has come down. So, there are a lot of economic inequities in Sweden that are getting bigger and bigger, wider and wider. If you look at graphs you will see that they go upwards in terms of youth unemployment, in terms of immigrants not wanting to vote anymore in Sweden. A couple of years ago immigrants were very happy that they were given the vote. So I think that it’s because of the possibility that this could generate unrest in Britain at a time when there have been 135 alleged attacks on Muslim targets in Britain in the past 48 hours because of the British soldier being killed in London. He was allegedly beheaded and he was chopped up. Press TV: Do you think what we are seeing there we are also seeing across Europe. Okay, high immigrant numbers as far as people migrating from other countries, but how much do they really become part of the society? Gould: Yes, that is an important point because I think the reason why in Britain we haven’t had anything really like this emanating from the Muslim or the African community in recent years. There were riots in the year 2001 and two years ago there were riots in London, but this was a general population of very angry young people. I think the difference between Sweden and the UK is that in the UK we have a huge number of African, West Indian and Muslim television presenters, television hosts and outstanding people in public life. Yasmin Alibhai Brown is on several nights a week. She is a very distinguished Muslim commentator and we have many outstanding politicians and members of the House of Lords, who originate from immigrant communities, they may have been born here, but they are from Iran, they are from Iraq. Their parents were. They didn’t come here from those countries, from Pakistan and from all over Africa and the West Indies. So I think that the youth here at least have some role models, whereas I don’t perceive this in Sweden. The other thing as your other guest said - that is important - is that Prime Minister Reinfeldt in Sweden, the prime minister has refused to visit these communities. He won’t go to Husby, which is a big immigrant community. That was the location of the original Swedish one million home program in the 60’s and 70’s, so it’s a very nice community, but they have a lot of problems. But, he won’t visit them. He calls them angry young men. I think it would do the country good if some of their ministers, including the prime minister, would go visit these people. Even President Nixon went out onto the steps of the Lincoln memorial in the middle of the night and visited the very angry anti-war protesters and talked to them one to one. And I think that is a very important step that needs to be taken in Sweden. Press TV: What do you make of our viewer’s comment (as follows: “Racist police, police brutality, poverty in the poorest suburbs where the most exploited and under-class people reside. I hope the trade unions join the protests against police brutality and the right wing that drive down society, and show sympathy for the youth against a failing capitalist system and brutal police even in Social Democratic Scandinavia. The Racist Ultra-nationalists and Christian fundamentalists are on the rise even in tolerant capitalist Scandinavia, observe the Christian-Extremist white supremacist attack in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik”)? Gould: I’ll play devil’s advocate here. It’s an expression that means I’ll defend the extreme right, even though I am not extreme right. That there’s a whole swave of the population of Sweden, you can read about it in the press, who are angry. They say look we have given these people everything. We have given them nice homes, they are living better in Sweden then they have lived anywhere else in Europe as immigrants. We have given them refuge, we have given them all sorts of benefits, why are they sitting around smoking and throwing rocks at police and starting fires, how dare they. We have been so kind and generous to them. And there is a good percentage of the Swedish population and the European population and here in Britain that feels that many young people who are from immigrant backgrounds, who are on the dole (unemployment benefits), who are given housing benefit, are behaving badly and ought to get their act together and they ought to behave responsibly and think outside the box and find themselves jobs or train to do something. And that is how many people in Britain feel too. I should tell your viewers that here in Britain in the past few months, the UKIP (UK Independent Party), which is a very right-wing party - it’s not far-right but it’s to the right of the conservative party - has gained thousands of votes. It’s got many new council seats. In recent elections they did extremely well because many British people, like I would rather suspect Swedish people feel, ‘oh enough is enough we are tired of hearing all of these immigrant groups complaining they don’t have jobs, why don’t they just get out there and do something, start a business’. From —PRESSTV, by GVN/HSN presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/26/305467/uk-media-keep-silent-on-sweden-protests/
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 07:42:42 +0000
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