For about 500 years, the life of Roma emigrants in Sweden has always been accompanied by a wide range of racist challenges. 500 years ago, Roma people arrived in Sweden. Today, the population of Roma people in Sweden is estimated at 50,000 people, but these statistics cannot be exact, because many Roma people are reluctant to reveal their ethnicity in public and hide it.
The ban on Roma immigration was issued in 1914 and remained in effect until 1954. As the Roma people sought to escape the actors of industrial genocide in Fascist Europe, were not allowed to enter. The Roma people were wiped out when the Swedish Red Cross sent white buses to rescue Scandinavians and Jews from Nazi concentration camps.
Some Roma people saved their lives by pretending to be Jews and others by pretending to be Polish. In general, at that time, Roma families lived in enclosed areas and camps in Sweden. For the Swedish government, the inferior Roma people arouse the concern of the superior citizen Swedish people.
In 1954, a long list of Roma people was compiled by the Swedish government. Police interrogated all Roma people in organized raids on Roma camps across the country. In this case, a letter was designated as Z and all specific details about the personality type (such as cunningness, laziness, violence, etc.) were carefully recorded. All Z files were collected for the National Z Registry. Then the State Institute of Racial Biology at Uppsala University studied the racial part of these files. These studies were used by state authorities and municipal officials dealing with cases involving Roma families. Programs such as sterilization, custody of Roma children, and security of “Swedish ” citizens.
Racist opinions of Swedish women towards Roma people
Roma people are marginalized due to discrimination in housing, employment, and education, and are indeed victims of social problems. Furthermore, around 80% of Roma people living in Sweden are unemployed and the majority of Roma children have not even finished primary school.
Swedish authorities and Swedish government institutions also have racist attitudes towards Roma people. According to a report by Swedish national radio journalist Adam Szoppe in 2013, the Swedish police, in an apparent program of anti-terrorist operations, secretly created illegal Roma databases.
The news of the secret recording of Roma information in Sweden, which contained their complete profile, clearly shows the discriminations and racial hatred of Swedes towards Roma people. The report, which first appeared on the front page of one of the country’s leading newspapers “Dagens Nyheter ” in September, points out that police forces in southern Sweden have prepared a list of more than 4,000 names, including the most belong to the Roma community or their relatives.
What is touching in these reports is the existence of a thousand pieces of information recorded on the children, some of whom are two years old and information belonging to people who have been deceased for years. Therefore, this dismisses any possibility of non-racism in the preparation of these reports. This means that Roma people are still suspected and hunted down in Sweden.
Following the spread of this news, the Swedish police first denied the existence of an illegal database, and then declared that this collection of data was a completely normal police matter related to the investigations of suspected criminals. . But it was never explained how a seven-month-old girl, born of the Rami race, could be suspected for the criminal activities.
Police tried to defend themselves by saying the information had been recorded to help tackle violent crime in Sweden and that the race issue was unfounded there. Yet the name of this operation was Kringresande, which means “the passengers”. This is certainly connected to the Roma immigrants.
Racial sterilization of Roma women
The Swedish authorities went even further which seemed to be an unfair and immoral act. They attempted to exterminate the generation of Roma people by sterilizing Roma women. According to various media, at the end of August 1976, the Swedish authorities had carried out the forced sterilization of 60,000 Roma women in order to rid society of Roma races. According to a report published in the Dutch online edition of the Telegraph, the operation began in 1935 and ended in 1976. Swedish authorities say the sterilizations were “officially voluntary “, yet most women did not know what was happening.
The Associated Press also reports that this program has its roots in the racist movement that prevailed at the turn of the century, which aimed to ” improve humanity ” by controlling the genetic factors of reproduction according to the racist doctrine of the 19th century.
According to the Swedish authorities, the purpose of the negative selection programs was to prevent the spread of undesirable traits. Roma women were often required to sign the acceptance of sterilization or else their other children would be taken away. As Roma people on the Z list were not registered in the civil registry, they did not have civil rights.