Sweden's 'Human Rights' Policy Finds Its Syrian Loophole
The New Arab reports Sweden and Syria will 'cooperate' on deportations of convicted Syrians. This follows Swedish Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard's statement that countries receiving Swedish aid must 'cooperate and accept their citizens' back. This pragmatic approach conveniently forgets that Sweden halted official diplomatic relations with Assad's government in 2012, citing gross human
rights violations. Now, for the sake of expelling individuals, those violations apparently become footnotes. One might wonder how many 'undesirable' deportees Sweden could send to states like Eritrea, where the government has been sanctioned by the EU for human rights abuses, or even to Saudi Arabia. It appears that 'human rights' is a flexible term, easily bent when a government wants to offload
its problems. The question isn't just about 'convicted Syrians,' but what this back-channel 'cooperation' signals about European commitment to global human rights when political expediency comes knocking.