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When the city of Gothenburg invited the Family Home Conference last year, Hamid Zafar was one of the speakers.
Under the title “Working in a multicultural context”, the invitation promised that Zafar, based on his experience as director of Angered and Biskopsgården, would talk about “how to handle complex situations rooted in a lack of understanding of cultural frames of reference and linguistic confusion of others? “
After the DN reveal on Thursday, the distances between Gothenburg politicians are in unison. Axel Josefson of the moderates, president of the city council, says that Hamid Zafar’s statements contradict the values of the school and Gothenburg, and the leader of the social democratic group Jonas Attenius says in turn that anti-Semitism, homophobia and Racism has no place in Swedish society.
Hamid Zafar wrote derogatory comments between 2011 and 2015. In an interview with DN, he says they were written during a period of his life when he was young and searching. He says their background had to do with frustration over the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and the Arab Spring in 2011.
– This was a revolutionary period in which I experienced frustration with the way the strong states beat the weak.
– It was partly a period in which I was a candidate in my political positions in different political opinions. But he also tried to find explanations for why the world is seen and constructed as political. In retrospect, I am aware that it was a very destructive period. Not just destructive, but a pretty flat and simplified picture of reality. They are opinions that I have distanced and left behind since then, says Hamid Zafar.
Liberal Municipal Council and school policy Helene Odenjung was involved when Hamid Zafar gained the trust of the administration as a principal. Today she says:
– Hate, incitement and threats do not belong in the school world or anywhere else. His statement contradicts the values of the school and of Gothenburg. If we had known what we know now, it would never have been the director of the city.
Social Democrats City Councilor Viktoria Tryggvadottir Rolka works with school issues and says what she hears about Hamid Zafar is particularly sad because he has been a role model for many young people in the suburbs of Gothenburg.
– Many young people have lost another role model, he tells DN.
