Baltic and Nordic Region

Baltic and Nordic Headlines

A summary of asylum and refugee-related stories in regional media.

Tuesday 9 March to Wednesday 10 March 2010

Denmark

Iraq: Don’t let us down

Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari has questioned Minister of Development Aid Søren Pind’s statement last week that Denmark has no ‘moral obligation’ to help Iraq, despite being part of the international coalition since 2003. Zebari said that Iraq obviously still needs foreign aid and that it is only natural that those countries that started the war have a moral obligation to keep paying. At the same time he stressed that the repatriation agreement between the governments in Copenhagen and Baghdad does not give Denmark the automatic right to deport Iraqi asylum-seekers who have not been granted residency in Denmark. Zebari said that it is a mutual agreement concerning voluntary repatriation, not forced deportation. He said that Denmark therefore has an obligation to help these people in accordance with international human rights standards and that help can be in the form of repatriation and assistance when they arrive home, but not deportation.
Politiken 10 March 2010 p.4 (in Danish)

Refugees poured into poverty statistics
Figures from the Labor Movement shows that long-term poverty is a growing problem among immigrants. While only 0.6 per cent of the Danes are poor, students omitted, 5.4 per cent of immigrants from less developed countries - including many refugees – are poor. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) considers the current legislation in the social sector to be the major problem behind this. Mette Blauenfeldt, head of the Center for Vulnerable Refugees in Danish Refugee Council, says that reduced benefits, putting a cap on cash assistance and reducing help for spouses, among other things, have affected ethnic minorities and refugees. Blauenfeldt also says that the DRC fears for the children who grow up in these families and questions how they will be able to cope in the future when their parents have not been able to afford to give them a proper childhood. The new figures show that the proportion of long term poor migrants from less developed countries has doubled from 2001 to 2007.
Berlingske Tidende 9 March 2010 (in Danish)
DR 9 March 2010 (in Danish)

Refugees and immigrants often subjected to coercion
A study published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia shows that mentally ill refugees and immigrants are hospitalized by force more frequently and are exposed to more coercive measures during their hospitalization at the psychiatric ward than their Danish counterparts.  Especially vulnerable are men who have come to Denmark as refugees. The survey was conducted by PhD Marie Nørredam from the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. She believes that there are several possible explanations for the findings.  Refugees and immigrants may indeed be more sick than the Danes due to stress or trauma experienced in their home countries. Other explanations may be that patients with refugee and immigrant backgrounds become sick because they do not contact health professionals in time. A total of 312,300 individuals, both immigrants, refugees and Danish control persons, participated in the study.
Dagens Medicin 8 March 2010 (in Danish)

Finland

Police start investigation into threats against Migration Minister
Police have begun investigating threats made on the internet against the Minister of Migration and European Affiairs, Astrid Thors. Senior Police Commissioner Göran Wennqvist of the National Bureau of Investigation says the case is being treated as an illegal threat. Police are separately investigating a Facebook group falsely opened in the minister’s name as a case of slander. Wennqvist adds a suspect has been questioned and has admitted guilt. Two weeks ago, Astrid Thors asked the police to investigate threats of violence made against her on Facebook saying the comments can no longer be justified as free speech. The National Bureau of Investigation is also examining an online hate site that calls for the murder of leading Finnish politicians as well as immigrants. The Finnish-language site is registered to a long-time American neo-Nazi.
YLE 8 March 2010 (in English)
YLE 8 March 2010 (in English)

Decisions on asylum applications take longer
Asylum-seekers in Finland have to wait for decisions on their asylum applications longer than before. For example, asylum-seekers at a reception center in Kemi municipality receive their decisions in 20 months, while last year the decisions arrived in one year. One family at the Kemi reception center has waited for their asylum decisions since December 2008. After receiving decisions on their asylum applications the asylum-seekers at the Kemi reception center still have to wait for months for their so-called municipal placements, which can be obtained in Kemi, Rovaniemi and Tornio municipalities.
YLE 8 March 2010 (in Finnish)

Finnish Supreme Court dismisses two appeals
The Supreme Administrative Court on Monday ruled against two elderly women who wanted to stay in Finland with their families. Egyptian citizen Eveline Fadayel and Russian citizen Irina Antonova will not be granted residence permits in Finland. This means that there are no legal obstacles to their expulsion from Finland. With no family in Egypt, Ms Fadayel, 65, has lived with her sons in Vantaa in southern Finland for almost three years. Under Finnish law, grandparents are not considered part of the nuclear family in a way that would entitle them to benefit from family unification. The court also refused to make an exception for humanitarian reasons. Antonova has been living with her daughter after coming to Finland in 2008 on a visitor’s visa.
Helsinki Times 8 March 2010 (in English)
Helsingin Sanomat 9 March 2010 (in English)
YLE 8 March 2010 (in Finnish)

Latvia

Illegal transportation of migrants to EU through Latvia
Illegal transportation of migrants from developing countries to the EU countries trough Latvia grows every year. Migrants from African and Asian countries arrive to Latvia from Russia, get fake documents and are transported further to Finland, Germany, and Holland. Persons who organize illegal migration earn around EUR 20,000 for each migrant.
Integration and Minority Information Service 10 March 2010 (in English)
Integration and Minority Information Service 9 March 2010 (in English)

Norway

Far fewer asylum-seekers in Norway
So far this year, there have been 1,552 asylum-applications registered in Norway, which is 39 per cent less for the same period last year. Most asylum-seekers come from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Somalia. According to new figures from the Directorate of Immigration (UDI), four out of ten asylum-seekers come from one of these three countries.
NRK 9 March 2010 (in Norwegian)

UNE broke the law
Two new  verdicts in the Oslo District Court shows that the Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board (UNE) broke the law when they tried to evict two families who had been staying in Norway for a long time. In 2006, a majority of the members of Parliament decided that it was important to take the well-being of the children into consideration when deciding if asylum-seeking families should be allowed to stay in Norway or not. According to attorney Arild Humlen, the two latest verdicts show that the Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board’s decisions did not match the Parliament's intentions and that the UNE have been too strict when assessing cases. Director of the Immigration Appeals Board, Terje Sjeggestad, says that the criticism is uncalled for and that the UNE is considering to appeal the two new verdicts.
NRK 10 March 2010 (in Norwegian)

Rygge settlement of refugees delayed
In the end of 2009, Rygge municipality was housing ten underage unaccompanied refugees - two in foster care and the rest divided among two ordinary homes in the Ekholt area. Finn A. Jensen (KrF) believed that there must be a goal for Rygge municipality to accept five to seven new refugees in 2010, while Jon Aga (SV) wanted to settle 15 people. However, they received little support for their proposals. The Socialist Left Party and the Christian Democratic Party tried, but the majority of the council in Rygge municipality wanted to postpone the work of refugee settlement. Frode Klemp (FRP) believed that the housing of refugees is far too expensive.
Moss Avis 10 March 2010 (in Norwegian)

Sweden

China rejects spy case findings
China has strongly denied allegations that it illegally gathered information on members of the Uighur community after a Swedish court jailed a man for spying. Babur Maihesuti, a 62-year-old Uighur man who had been living in Sweden for 13 years as a political refugee, was sentenced by a Stockholm court to 16 months in prison on Monday for spying on expatriates from the mainly Muslim minority. He had given the data to a Chinese diplomat and journalist who, on assignment from the nation's intelligence service, carried out operations in Sweden for Beijing, the court said.
The Local 9 March 2010 (in English)
Sveriges Radio 9 March 2010 (in English)
Dagens Nyheter 9 March 2010 (in Swedish)
Dagbladet 9 March 2010 (in Swedish)

Hundreds of refugee children gone into hiding in Sweden
Hundreds of children have escaped from the Swedish refugee reception centers during the recent years. Some of the children flee to other countries, but many still reside in Sweden, hidden, and without a family. Over 700 unaccompanied refugee children have gone into hiding in Sweden since 2005. The Migration Board does not know where they have gone, and the National Board of Health and Welfare say they do not bear any responsibility over the hidden children. In Malmö, the Social Services have no track at all on the children. According to Christina Heilborn, Children Rights lawyer at UNICEF, this appears to be the case also in several other municipalities. According to Heilborn, it is important that the Social Services can help these children and that there is no obligation to notify the police.
Sveriges Radio 9 March 2010 (in Swedish)

Sweden loses case in Strasbourg
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has ruled that Sweden would be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights were it to deport an Iranian dissident. The Iranian man applied for asylum in Sweden in 2003, claiming that he had taken part in a demonstration against the Iranian regime in 2001, and that he had been arrested, tortured and imprisoned for two years before managing to flee the prison and the country. In 2007 a Swedish Migration Court decided to put its decision to send the man back to Iran on hold. The European Court finds the man's story credible and believes that the statement from the man's doctor supports the torture claims. If the Swedish authorities doubt this, they should have asked for expert advice, according to the European court. If the man is deported to Iran he could face inhuman treatment, the Court says.
Dagens Nyheter 10 March 2010 p:10 (in Swedish)
Sveriges Radio 9 March 2010 (in English)
Sveriges Radio 9 March 2010 (in Swedish)
Sveriges Television 9 March 2010 (in Swedish)

Gender-based violence no obvious reason for asylum
Each year, there are women who come to Sweden to seek for protection from gender-based violence. In order to investigate the situation in Northern Iraq, the Swedish Migration Board, the Swedish Red Cross and the Swedish Refugee Advice Center conducted a joint trip to the Kurdish-controlled parts of Iraq in April 2009. The Migration Board indicates that the number of honour killings in the area decreased by 60 percent between 2007 and 2008. In 2008, 117 women were murdered. According to Anna-Pia Beier, lawyer at the Swedish Refugee Advice Center, the situation in the area has improved, but women still lack protection. She believes that women at risk for honour-related violence should be granted a residence permit in Sweden and not be returned to Northern Iraq. In order to get asylum in Sweden, it is generally required that the asylum-seeker can prove that she has sought protection through agencies or organizations in Kurdistan and that she has been unable to obtain such protection.
Göteborgs Fria Tidning 8 March 2010 (in Swedish)

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