Tag: demonstration

Huge Swedish demonstration against the vaccine pass

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Yesterday, in central Stockholm and Gothenburg, a huge anti-vaccine pass demonstration took place. Thousands of people, assumed unvaccinated, crowded together in a public square and marched the streets.

One demonstrator was interviewed on tv and said ‘I want the right to my own body, I believe in freedom, I don’t want to be forced to take a vaccine’.

Last I checked, the vaccine was voluntary and nobody’s forcing anybody.

We have the freedom to do what we want: take the vaccine or don’t. I have had Covid and do not want to experience it again. So I choose to take the vaccine to protect myself from serious illness if I get re-infected. However, that is only a part of my choice. I also choose the vaccine to protect others in society, to try to reduce the spread of the virus and out of solidarity for our exhausted health care workers.

If somebody else does not want to get vaccinated, that is their liberty. They are in the minority in Sweden, at roughly 15%.

There is a confusion between pro- or anti-vaccine and supporting the existence of a vaccine pass. The demonstration seemed to mix up both issues. They are very different.

However, the ironic truth is that if more people got vaccinated, the fewer restrictions we would need. The more who are vaccinated, the less likely it is we need a vaccine pass.

Many people dismiss these demonstrators as ‘tin foil hatters’ – a pejorative term for people with paranoid, persecutory delusions. However, this diminishes an important and valid concern. The debate around vaccination really is a tricky one. There is a conflict between the right to make one’s own decisions over what happens to one’s body – versus the collective level of safety necessary to protect vulnerable people and the healthcare system. What we need to figure out is how to strike a balance between individual rights and the public good. The question is who’s rights weigh the strongest: a person denying a vaccine, or a vulnerable at-risk person who cannot take the vaccine?

I am sure most of us agree that safety is the basis of freedom. That’s why I see the vaccine pass as a temporary way to protect the public, while still enabling us as individuals to live a freer life.

It will hopefully enable us to protect ourselves and each other, and alleviate the burden carried by our health care workers. And it will hopefully lead to a quicker path out of the pandemic. For me, that is worth trading off against a small restriction on my personal rights.

Swedish Music Aid

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Children are not for sale!

Did you know that every minute, 4 children are sold into the sex industry around the world? An estimated 2,000,000 children are victims of sex trade and many more in human trafficking. These figures are hard to grasp, and even harder to process. Sexual trading of children can involve local boys who are abused by tourists, impoverished girls who are sold as sex slaves to rich families, or children who are ordered like fast food on the internet. The actions of the perpetrators are ruthless and the list of assaults is endless.

But we can do something about it.

‘Children are not for sale’ is the theme of this year’s charitable Music Aid (Musikhjälpen) project in Sweden. For the tenth year in a row, three radio hosts are locked into a glass cube for 6 days on a square in a town somewhere in Sweden. This year the event takes places in the northern city of Umeå, and the hosts broadcast music and tv non-stop day and night to gather donations for their good cause. To raise money one can, amongst other things, request a song, carry out a fund-raising action and bid in the various auctions that take place. This is Swedish solidarity at its very best.

Today, 17 Dec, is their final day of incarceration – the hosts are let out of their glass cube this evening and the total amount that has been raised will be announced. The millions of crowns that they gather will be spent on prevention of the child sex trade, protection of at-risk children and rehabilitation of children who have been victims.

It is still not too late for you to make a donation. Download the Musikhjälpen app (mh2017) and make a contribution! You can also go to http://www.musikhjalpen.se or find the same on Facebook. Every donation counts!

Your contribution can save a child from a terrible, terrible fate.

Please donate! Please share this blog with your friends and encourage them to do the same.

Why Nazis are welcome to Gotland 

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes


When I went to university in the U.K., there was a policy called ‘no platform’. This meant that students were allowed to demonstrate, hold rallies and meetings about any subject they liked except with one agenda – racist. The university claimed it was democratic but also allowed ‘no platform for racists’. I personally do not hold right-wing views, but this policy never sat easily with me as I saw the clear paradox that it created and it raised the question of what a democracy is. This is a question that raises its head very frequently in today’s culturally and politically polarized society. 

One very recent example in Sweden is the annual politics week that finishes today on the Baltic island of Gotland. This is a week where political parties gather and debate the current political landscape of the country. It’s a tradition that started in 1968 under the initiative of legendary leader Olof Palme. This year, for the first time, a Nazi group were allowed to participate  with a tent and speeches. They, course, were condemned by all parties and many voices to ban them were heard – ‘no platform for Nazis’. 

This is the dilemma for any modern democracy. If democracy means that everybody has the right to exercise their own ideas and beliefs, then society can not ban or intervene when people have the ‘wrong’ beliefs. We can’t just stop somebody from participating because we don’t like their point of view. It is different of course if they are breaking the law. But being a nazi is not breaking the law in Sweden, just as it is not illegal to be a civil rights activist, a communist or a feminist campaigner. 

We shouldn’t forget the very foundation of a democratic society means the right to hold whatever belief we want and go wherever we want with whoever we want. That is our liberty. If we start to infringe on it with bans, or ‘no platform’ policies, we are heading down a slippery slope of state control, elitism and autocracy. 

For me, Nazis should not be forbidden to go to Gotland. To ban them is to undermine our democracy. Threatening behavior, nazi symbolism, Hitler salutes, encitement of violence are however illegal and should not be accepted or allowed. 

It is in the shadow that their presence casts that a counter balance can be demonstrated. And exactly that happened on Gotland in the form of a well-visited Diversity Parade. Thousands of people marched for a plurastic society and in protest of the views propagated by right wing parties. This was a fantastic manifestation representing the majority of Swedes. And this could only happen in a democratic society. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not undermining anybody’s discomfort or fear. I am sure that the presence of the Nazis was horrible to experience. But if history has shown us anything it is that we cannot put our heads in the sand and ignore these destructive forces. We must face them head on in debate, in demonstration, in democracy and in massive, massive resistence. 

Swedish revolution 

Posted on by Neil Shipley's watching the Swedes

Whoever thought of Swedes as a pacifistic,  neutral people needs to think again. After a racist advertising campaign was put up in the underground system by Sweden’s right wing nationalistic party, people decided they’d had enough. Crowds appeared at the station in question and demonstratively tore down the offending advertising. 

Swedes are taking a stand against the rising racism and xenophobia in society. Recent polls show that the party representing these attitudes has become the largest opposition party to the government. 

I feel at times that the open and tolerant Sweden I love is something of the past. But these reactions and these pictures show that the majority of Swedes will not take this sitting down. They will take to the streets and they will act to defend the rights of all people living in this particular spot on the planet.