Calls for action as Swedish TV rejects anti-immigration ad
Published: 02 September, 2010, 17:48
Edited: 12 September, 2010, 02:25
TAGS: Scandal, EU, Politics, Mass media, Immigration
A dispute over freedom of speech is raging in Sweden after an anti-immigration campaign advert for a political party was rejected by broadcasters there.
Last Friday, Swedish TV channel TV4 said it would not broadcast an advert by the far-right Sweden Democrats because it considered the ad would incite racial hatred.
This prompted calls from politicians in neighboring Denmark, including MP Michael Aastrup Yensen, to send election observers to Sweden.
Yensen thinks that a true democracy requires open debate on any issues, including the sensitive ones.
“I am a firm believer in a true democracy, and in a true democracy you have an open free debate, especially in the time you have an election campaign… Even in sensitive issues like, for example, immigration policy – it is a lot better to debate it in the open than to hide it under the carpet and try to imagine it’s not there,” Yensen said.
The transmission in question shows a race between an elderly lady and several burqa-clad women with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration.
“What the television station in Sweden has done is say ‘We don’t agree with the political issue.’ And that is, you know, very unhappy from a political standpoint… if a television station says no to a party because it does not believe in that party’s politics,” Yensen points out.
According to the politician, only a court can draw the fine line between what constitutes freedom of speech and what is inciting ethnical hatred. In his opinion, this is not a racial issue, but an immigration debate.
Moreover, such an incident would definitely be labeled inadmissible if it took place somewhere in Eastern Europe, Yensen added. So, for the sake of democracy, Sweden should receive similar treatment.
If Sweden refuses to have observers at the election, Jensen concluded, he will raise the issue at the next meeting of the Council of Europe, an organization founded to defend democracy and freedom of speech.
As reported by AFP on Wednesday, the channel finally agreed to air the revised version of the advert. Spokesman for the station has explained that the new version of the ad, unlike the old one, breaches neither the channel’s guidelines nor the constitutional freedom of speech law banning incitement of racial hatred.
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Sweden is a socially engineered state, even their internet country code is SE. In Sweden the whole population is indocrinated from birth via controlled teaching and media into the model 'social' citizen; lined up so that the achievers don't complain when they are robbed to look after the idle ones. Sweden is often said to have commie tendencies, and it does exactly. How they get away with it, because they don't threaten anyone, and indeed provide a good NATO tool (outside but within). Therefore it is no surprise that they are applying censorship to immigration issues. Sweden is filling gradually with immigrants, you would have to be blind not to notice it. Some parties have, and realise Sweden itself has a huge problem being manufactured for itself. The elite is Sweden however, just don't care, they sit above the socially engineered state as royalty, gazing down on the socially engineered masses. For them any extra numbers are good numbers to rule as subjects. So Sweden is terrified and stifles free speech, when it relates to internal issues that question their socially engineered values.They are always top at preaching to others, when either doing nothing, or doing something bad themselves!
Nr3 to answer Samuil and the rest of the world Yes Sweden DO NEED UN election OBSERVERS but it is to LATE as this smear campaign made by a completely based media started already in January. People in the West generally feared the U.S.S.R or the Soviet Union media embargo during the cold war. SWEDEN is under such an embargo, it is a thought police that runs everything; it is corruption from the top down. WE NEED UN OBSERVERS to secure free and unbiased elections YES. We need some kind of control system to review our OWN medias Unbiased nature that claims to be free and not swaying in any direction. I KNOW they would fail immediately if there where such a control system. They would fail in every aspect of it, if RT would check its unbiased claim they would find it ludicrous and one sided. Any international News Agency would find the same answer. A non functional debatable banana republic with a two party system and a completely corrupt media outlet. What we got is a dreamworld built up by a completely biased two party system. Yes there are other parties but they are not the parties that rules Sweden after Election Day. The ones that does it is the two parties that would refuse cooperation with a party that get into parlament. People votes they do vote as they do cause they live in this reality they show. This is not a show. This is the reality they show on this TV add and Denmark should have golden medal for pointing this out. The citizens over here is clearly to brainwashed to see what is fundamentally wrong in this society. TYVM












Samuil: Politics are about how to spend money. SD suggests to cut down on expense A to be able to increase funding for expense B, it's as simple as that. All other parties do the same. It's a fact that SD consistently scores above 4% (the Parliament representation threshold) in public opinion surveys and that they should be treated as any other major political actor on the Swedish arena. But they are not, they are being bullied in ways that would be unthinkable in other Western countries (although I bet that historically, NSDAP and KPSS would approve of this). Sweden needs independent election observers and the Swedes themselves need to actually hear what the rest of the world thinks about them. I spend a lot of time abroad and people think that we are extremists, honestly.