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When the Swedish Democrats in 2016 presented a grand prize to the former president of the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, it caused a stir. Mainly because the gala at the Grand Hotel took the form of a distancing from the idea of human rights. In his thank you speech, Klaus said, among other things:
“We underestimate that the glorification of human rights was a revolutionary denial of civil rights … Human rights do not need citizenship, therefore, right-wingism demands the destruction of national sovereignty, especially in today’s Europe.” (Expressen, 5/11 2016)
Now was the time to end the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. When SD opposed the human rights of civilians, they had previously stood out from the other parliamentary parties. In particular, it was the right to asylum, which is enshrined in article 14 of the 1948 Declaration (this article grants the right to seek asylum, not to receive it automatically). It goes without saying that the Declaration was drafted as part of building a new world after World War II, after the Holocaust, at a time marked by massive refugee flows from the war.
El tiempo is not just any magazine, but a window to the party’s opinions on ideological issues
I shouldn’t be surprised when I find Klaus’s argument, almost word for word, published in the social democratic think tank Tiden, now signed by financial law professor Roger Persson Österman. The headline is “Absolute Rights – A Formation of Bourgeois Myth” and Österman writes:
“Some claim that the right of refugees would be absolute and inviolable. In my opinion, it does not conform to the philosophy of rights on which the labor movement is based, no individual right is absolute. Moreover, the individual right of the refugee it must be violated against the strong collective right that Swedish welfare policy can be maintained de facto ”.
El tiempo is not just any magazine, but a window into the party’s views on ideological issues. It is also no secret that a strong phalanx within S has lobbied for the party to follow what the Danish sister party considers a successful line, which is seen as winning back Danish People’s Party voters by mimicking its refugee policy.
It can be difficult for Social Democrats to sing about that human courage they demand on May Day.
We could do that here to a philosophy seminar and talk about the positivist legal tradition in Swedish law that Österman expresses. But more important in this context is to remember that its text is a clear departure from the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This is because it is constructed as a whole: if you take one right, the others fall. If the right of asylum is eliminated, the distance from torture in article five disappears, as does the strong wording on equality in article one.
Please note: if you have opinions on how the right to asylum is handled in practice and the consequent problems that refugee flows create, it is something completely different than talking about the abolition of basic human rights. But time speaks for itself. “Absolute rights” are dismissed as a bourgeois myth. It can be difficult for Social Democrats to sing about that human worth they claim on May Day.
This kind of slip it should not go unnoticed. It may seem peripheral that SD and KD in Uppsala are exerting that we should no longer fly the UN flag. But the trend is clear. That is why I urge everyone who cares about this with human rights as a guideline in politics: demand clear language from party leaders: how do you view the UN Declaration of 1948? We can no longer be sure. For me, it determines how I vote.
Read more articles by Ola Larsmo.
