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IMMIGRATION

Moderate hierarchy warns Vellinge party cadre

The Moderate party secretary Per Schlingmann has warned party members in Skåne in southern Sweden over comments regarding the housing of refugee children at a Vellinge youth hostel.

Published: 15 November 2009 09:03 CET
Moderate hierarchy warns Vellinge party cadre

“I consider several of the comments to be inappropriate,” Schlingman wrote in a letter to local Moderate politicians across the country.

The Moderate party hierarchy has acted in response to comments from Skåne party chairperson and Vellinge county counsellor Lars-Ingvar Ljungman.

Ljungman was critical of the decision by Malmö County Council to use a former youth hostel in Hököpinge to house around 30 young boys from Afghanistan and Somalia saying that Vellinge had been unfairly overruled.

Ljungman vowed to find ways to close down the hostel before the refugee children’s arrival.

His position attracted media attention to the general issue of Swedish municipalities freedom to decide over how many refugees to take into their care and to Vellinge County Council’s refugee policy in particular.

Ljungman’s comments have also sparked conflict within the Moderate party in Skåne with vice-chairperson, Pia Kinhult, distancing herself from her Vellinge colleague.

“The Skåne Moderates and I dissociate ourselves from the statements and the policy pursued by the Vellinge Moderates. I talk for a majority within the Skåne Moderates, but obviously not for our chairperson,” Kinhult from Ängelholm told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

The Swedish migration minister Tobias Billström told news agency TT that he was tired of discussing Vellinge specifically and would like instead to consider the bigger picture.

“I have no different view than that of my party colleagues in Skåne: More councils have to agree to receive refugee children, and Vellinge council, just like all the other municipalities, should sign agreements with the Migration Board (Migrationsverket), because they have the capacity and knowledge to do so,” he said.

Billström underlined that it is up to Malmö and Vellinge to find a resolution to the problem and warned of the consequences for the system if county councils do not take a greater responsibility.

“The main focus needs to be that if nothing happens now, with regard to the number of municipal places, then the system which we have today will collapse at some point in the middle of December, with or without Vellinge.”

Vellinge County is a municipality in the south-western tip of Sweden and is home to 32,270 people. It is considered to be one of the most economically prosperous parts of the country and enjoys one of the lowest levels of income tax.

According to Migration Board statistics for the period up to and including September 2009 Vellinge is the only county council in Skåne that has not accepted a single refugee.

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Published: 4 June 2024 14:50 CEST
Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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