Vol. 72/No. 13      March 31, 2008

A week earlier the board of education recommended that the city council revoke the permit and withdraw funding for the company that runs the child-care centers, which care for 194 children, with 79 waiting to be admitted. The company’s owner has been accused of financial irregularities and has been held in custody since January 18 without trial.

Many of the women at the protest meeting assailed the authorities for their disregard of the rights of the families involved. One woman said, “I am as Swedish as anybody else. But the Swedish society is trampling on our right to freely choose the best care for our children. That would never happen in the Östermalm.” She was referring to a well-to-do area in downtown Stockholm.

Other women pointed to the necessity of the children learning their mother tongue thoroughly in order to be able to master Swedish. The targeted child-care centers are bilingual in Swedish and Somali. Several speakers also demanded the release of the centers’ owner and employees.

Zeinab Abukar told this reporter after the meeting that the parents are committed to keep on fighting. They intend to keep the children at home if the centers are closed down, rather than sending them to other child-care centers.

In a parallel development three men in Stockholm and three others in Oslo were arrested February 28 and accused of making “preparations for terrorism.” They were all Somalis and the three were from Rinkeby.

Some of the six men have contact with the “Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia,” an organization that opposed the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops that was supported by Washington. Protests against the arrests are planned to take place outside the courthouse when the cases are taken up by the court.

A statement by the Communist League in Sweden called for the release of the arrested Somalis and repeal of all terrorist legislation. “It is obvious that the Security Police uses the terrorist legislation in Sweden—which was sharpened in May 2002—to terrorize organizations.” The statement said this “is part of ‘the long war against terror,’ driven by imperialist governments from Washington to Stockholm against political and union activists at home and with troop deployments abroad.”

Catharina Tirsén contributed to this article.  
 
 
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