Jenny’s Pennies

According to our parliament, Swedish doctors are now supposed to put medical ethics aside and be used as a migration political signal system.Today, the parliament voted yes on the new legislation on health care rights for asylum seekers. But the right to health care for undocumented migrants and hidden refugees is not addressed.

Asylum seekers only have the right to emergency care (unless they cough up the whole cost themselves). But those who are in the country without the correct papers and those who have gone into hiding after being denied asylum will continue to be denied equal access to health care. Some of them are lucky enough to live in regions where the administration has said that they will become law breakers and put the medical needs of the individual first. Some of them are lucky enough to get help by the networks of volunteer medical personnel who provide health care to hidden people; in secret and without pay. But all are not so lucky.

Henry Ascher wrote in yesterday’s Dagens Nyheter: medical personnel are now supposed to give care and treatment, not according to the patient’s medical needs, not according to scientifically proven methods, but according to thirteen different “migration status criteria”.

“This is totally unique. Tax evaders, Engla-murderers*, pedophiles, Tv-license evaders, gang leaders and nazis, all have a right to get their medical needs assessed on the same grounds as everybody else. And it has to be that way for the public to have continued trust in us in health care. We manage health care. Other problems are managed by other bodies of society”.

But according to a majority of our parliamentarians, “sending the right signals” is more important than human rights, and doctors and nurses are now supposed to select among those who seek care.

As our minister for migration, Tobias Billström, put it:

The person who has never been interested in applying for asylum but comes to work illegally, hasn’t followed the laws and rules which applies to everyone else in Sweden. Should they then have the same rights as those who follows laws and rules and pays taxes?

I can think of plenty of people who hasn’t “followed the laws and rules which applies to everyone else”, some of them in Billström’s own party. Who’s next in line to be denied their human rights?

Previous posts:
Sickening. I have no other words right now. (May 12th)
Unite for Human Rights: access to health care for undocumented migrants in Sweden (my contribution to the Bloggers Unite for Human Rights event May 15th)

*Engla was a 10 year old girl who was brutally murdered earlier this spring.

(My post for Bloggers Unite for Human Rights)

Today, bloggers all over the world are joining together to blog for human rights. And there is certainly no shortage of subjects to chose from when it comes to this issue - there are huge human rights problems in the world today. But today I’ve decided to keep blogging about an issue closer to (my) home: the treatment of undocumented migrants in Sweden when it comes to health care. For background information, you should read this post from a few days ago.

PICUM, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, wrote in their report “Access to health care for undocumented migrants in Europe” (2007):

The absolute lack of entitlements as well as the inexistence of any publicly funded reimbursement scheme to cover expenses incurred by hospitals for providing health care to undocumented migrants has led to numerous and serious consequences for undocumented migrants’ health. Similarly, it has put enormous pressure on health care providers and civil society organizations. Undocumented migrants constitute one of the most vulnerable groups in Sweden and failure by the Swedish government to recognize their presence and their very basic health needs contributes largely to their stigmatization and discrimination. Very few undocumented migrants attempt to approach health services in Sweden and most of them find numerous barriers against accessing appropriate health care. In the framework of a survey conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières in Stockholm from July to September 2005, 82% of undocumented migrants who had sought health care reported to have encountered barriers against access. They reported barriers such as being turned away by administrative staff at health care centers as well as indirect obstacles like the high costs of consultations and medication, the feeling that they were not entitled to access health care and the fear of approaching the services and being reported to the authorities.

The whole report in pdf-format is available at PICUM’s website.

According to Tobias Billström, Sweden’s minister for migration, the proposed new legislation seeks to address the issue of lack of regulation of health care rights for asylums seekers. In a reply to Maceij Zaremba’s article (referenced in the post a few days ago), he writes that the new legislation won’t limit the rights to health care to undocumented or “hidden” migrants and refugees any more than it does today: they will still be able to receive immediate and emergency care. (What he fails to mention is that they have to pay full price for that care.)

To formalize and regulate what rights asylum seekers have is all fine and well, but after that Billström’s reasoning starts to get really shady. It becomes all too clear that the government really wants to send a signal, and that being refused health care is seen as a proper punishment for being in the country without the correct papers. He writes (my translation):

It is not so easy as to say that everyone, no matter if they have the right to be in Sweden or not, should have the same rights. The person who comes here as an asylum seeker but is denied asylum after a due process shall return to their home country. The person who has never been interested in applying for asylum but comes to work illegally, hasn’t followed the laws and rules which applies to everyone else in Sweden. Should they then have the same rights as those who follows laws and rules and pays taxes?

Maceij Zaremba puts is perfectly in his reply, where he writes:

I don’t know if it is populism or ingenuousness that guides his pencil when he asks why those who doesn’t obey the law should have the same rights as the law-abiding. Doesn’t he know that in two areas (health care and judicature), blind equal treatment is necessary for our view of humans not to go rotten. Or does he mean that those who cheat on their taxes forfeit their right to a fair trial?

The example isn’t mine, but UN special rapporteur Paul Hunt’s, who tried to teach the government the principal difference between the right to housing allowance and the right to health and justice. If the latter are conditional, then democracy is corrupted.

(emphasis mine)

That my government wants to sort people at the hospital entrance is shameful. Even more shameful is that they expect the doctors and nurses to stand there at the door and send those not worthy away. When someone without the correct paperwork comes in to a health care clinic, my government expects the doctors and nurses to betray their profession and the medical ethics, and show them the door. Luckily, the medical community is fighting back. In the face of a law which expects them to break UN conventions and their medical oaths, medical personnel and health care civil servants are coming up with new and creative ways to ensure that undocumented migrants and hidden refugees are given access to a most basic human right: the right to life and health. And that right, Tobias Billström, cannot be forfeited by being here without the correct papers.

More information in Swedish:
Rätt till vård-initiativet
Vård för alla
The Facebook group Rätt till vård had about 30 members when I joined after reading Zaremba’s article May 11th. Now there are more than 2000 members! On Sunday May 18th at 2pm there is a protest outside the parliament building in Stockholm in support of equal right to health care. Read more here.

Today’s oh-dear-God-should-I-laugh-or-cry is found at Sadly, No! by way of Fistful of Euros. It’s the halp-halp-the-scary-Muslims-are-coming-BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA-blog Gates of Vienna* who presents us with a map of what Europe will look like in 2067, unless we start deporting/converting/killing/rounding up/turning away Muslims and produce more white babies. Where is Europe headed? they ask (in trembling voices). Well, apparently towards this:

So, we’ll have the Muslim states (with funny names like Al-Lemania and Al-Italia!), the Russian federation and the Russian protectorates, a demilitarized zone and some “neutral” states, which besides seemingly ever-neutral Switzerland also includes the Czech Republic (huh?!?). Germany will for some inexplicable reason be divided along the old iron curtain borders and Yugoslavia will magically reunite. Also, Turkey seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.
This map is like one of those “find five faults” picture games times a million.

And as Alex Harrowell at a Fistful of Euros aptly points out: if this whole thing is about demography, do they really think that Russia doesn’t have a demographics problem?

Yeah, I need to stop laughing now, my stomach hurts.

*I ain’t linking, but click on the Sadly, No! link and continue from there.

Usually I’m glad to be Swedish. Not proud, because I don’t understand why I should be proud of a coincidence, but yeah, glad. And we have a pretty good reputation around the world. It’s the inheritance of the Olof Palme years - that solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the hungry and the exploited. Many still view Sweden as a country which stands for those values.

And among our own population, many still believe that we are the good-hearted, although they don’t see it as a good thing. “We can’t take care of everyone!” they whine. But those of us who are based in reality, we know that we aren’t taking care of everyone. We aren’t even taking care of those who we are obliged to take care of.

But for those who still lives with the delusion that Sweden is a compassionate country who cares about the less fortunate, we are getting ready to “send out new signals” and take that belief out of them. This is one of those times when I’m not happy to be Swedish. I’m ashamed and sad.

The subject is health care for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. New proposed legislation says that the only health care they have a right to is emergency treatment, maternal care, abortion care and contraceptive advice. (Unless they are under 18, in which case they have the same rights as Swedish citizens does). And even if they have a “right” to this health care, they still have to pay full price for it: a delivery will cost 21.000 SEK, a broken leg 63.000. In the future, your rights as a patient will depend on what criteria you fulfill. Some will be able to get maternal care, some don’t. If you fall under paragraph four you will get your heart medication, otherwise you’re on your own.

Maciej Zaremba writes about this shameful legislation in today’s Dagens Nyheter. It’s a long article, and for once, I’m completely with him - every single word along the way. A piece (my translation):

In August 1920, my father stood in a tent outside Warsaw. He stitched abdomens together, applied bandages and amputated legs. Narcosis was unheard of, so both doctors and patients had to do with alcohol. The summer was hot, flies were feasting in the open wounds, corpses turned black before they were buried.
It was, you need to say, horrible sights. But in one respect less offensive than what is going on in Rosenbad*.
Most of the bodies that my father tended to were illegally in the country. They had neither visa, nor the four digits**. Soldiers in an invading army are as undocumented as anyone can be. But they were tended to in the same way as those people that they had just tried to kill.
Because for a doctor, meant my father, there are no fellow countrymen or enemies, legals or illegals. There are only patients.

That is the principle that minister for migration Tobias Billström now wants to change. It is impractical, according to Billström. “Sends the wrong signals”, he has said. By which he means that if a pregnant Iranian who has been denied asylum are given maternal care, she will immediately start to think that she is welcome to Sweden. Wrong signal! But if she is denied help and has a miscarriage, the voice of Sweden will sound clearly. Won’t be able to misunderstand. Same thing with a hidden Afghan who will see his cancer grow freely. The tumour becomes the right signal: that a no from the Migration Board really is a no.

Read read read!

Sweden is, together with Austria, the worst offender in Europe when it comes to equal treatment in health care. This according to PICUM, The Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants. No other countries have come up with the idea of using illness and injuries as a political signal, of thinking that sickness and maybe death is a proper punishment for failing to adhere to the authorities’ request that you should leave the country.

But there is opposition. To treat people differently depending on their legal status is not in adherence with the medical oath, and the Swedish Association of Health Professionals have said that their members will act according to the UN Convention: they will do their job no matter what background the patient has. A spokesperson for the Swedish Medical Association has called the law “disgraceful” and states that doctors won’t be able to adhere to it. And Region Skåne (the region in southern Sweden) decided almost unanimously (only xenophobic party Sverigedemokraterna were against) that asylum seekers who are hiding and other undocumented/uninsured patients have a right to health care, no matter their ability to pay for it.

The “Right to health care“-initiative is started by a large number of organizations who thinks that Sweden shouldn’t break the human rights conventions that we have signed by denying health care to undocumented immigrants.
There is also a Facebook group for the initiative (requires login).

The proposed law is supported by the Moderates, the Social Democrats and the Center Party. The Left Party and the Greens are against it, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals are undecided. On the regional/local level, Sverigedemokraterna (populist xenophobes) are of course for it - they also think that undocumented children should be denied health care, unless they have some contagious disease that could affect a real Swede.

If this goes through, it shatters the last shivering remains of the image of Sweden as a just society, where people are of equal value. But what does that matter, as long as we are sending out strong signals, right?

It’s truly sickening. Luckily, I’m a citizen with all my papers in order, so I can go see a doctor for my nausea.

*The Swedish government building in Stockholm.
** The four unique digits in the personal number given to every Swedish citizen.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders has released his anti-Islam film “Fitna”. It was quite comical today when editorial writer Per Gudmundsson (Svenska Dagbladet) on page 4 in the paper questions whether the movie really exists and complains how it has been stopped by politicians, the media and companies like Google, and then in the same paper, on page 21, there is an article about how the movie is available on the internet. And it’s very Google-able. Per Gudmundsson has noted his mistake.

From what I have read about the movie (I’m sorry, but I’m not going to watch it. Scold me all you want for it, but I’m not) it doesn’t really seem like an insightful work of art. Selected quotes from the Quran blended with pictures of the terrorist attacks on New York, London and Madrid, of executions and stonings and other such terrifying things. More pictures of the Quran, and then in the end the sound of a page being ripped out, said to be a page from a phone book, and then a call to the Muslims themselves to rip the “evil pages” out of the Quran.

Some commenters I have read are of course hailing Wilders’ film as a very important wake up call to us in the west. How? What does the movie accomplish? To me, it seems to add nothing new - any one can pick up a Quran at a book store (albeit translated unless you read Arabic) and the movie clips are of the same kind readily available on the internet, and in many cases, on our TV screens during the evening news. An internet documentary, of which there are twenty a dozen. A tired provocation.

It seems as if the right wing populist parties and the extremist islamists are living in some kind of symbiosis - they can’t exist without each other. For the extremist islamists, the movie is yet another reason to preach their hate, and for the anti-Islam populists, the protests become yet another reason to preach their hate and make yet another movie or caricature. And on and on it goes. Sigh.

What I want to know is - if the anti-Islam crowd are so hell-bent on defending our freedom and our way of life against the said onslaught of scary scary Muslims, what is their proposed solution to the “Islam problem”? Because all of the solutions which comes to my mind run quite contrary to that beloved freedom and democracy they so want to defend. So, what do they propose? Deporting all Muslims? Converting them to another religion by force? Forbid all expressions of Islam (however that one will work)? Invade all Muslim countries, kill their leaders and forcibly convert the population to Christianity (the Ann Coulter solution)? Make being a Muslim a punishable crime (and what should be the punishment? re-education? death? prison?)? Round up all Muslims and put them in special camps? What is the idea?

I haven’t heard anyone in the right wing populist anti-Islam crowd actually propose a solution to the perceived problem. It’s like when pro-choicers ask the pro-life crowd what the punishment for having an abortion should be. The answer is — crickets. Or some mumbling about “but that’s not what I meant”. It’s easy to rail and chant and make movies and provoke, but when they are called on the consequences of their ideas, they are mostly speechless.

PS. nowhere in this post have I questioned the right of Geert Wilders to make the movie and to show it. He has every right to do that, no matter how stupid it is. That is not the point.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately (to my approximately two readers); here’s a clue to what I’ve been doing.

So, remember this? Now, the investigation is apparently finished and…

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A bailiff who forgot about a woman locked in a courthouse holding cell and left her there for four days without food, water or access to a bathroom has been suspended for 30 days but will keep his job, officials said Wednesday.

Washington County Cpl. Jarrod Hankins acted without “intentional misconduct” when he left Adriana Torres-Flores in the 9 1/2-by-10 1/2-foot cell, Sheriff Tim Helder said.

Hankins “became busy and simply forgot” about the woman last Thursday, leaving her in the cell with only a jacket until Monday morning. (full story here)

Yep, that’s right. He’s getting off with a slap on the wrist. No criminal charges, no loss of job. For doing something that could have left a person dead.
Oh, no sorry, not a person, an “illegal immigrant from Mexico”. I’ll just second what Vox ex Machina said:

Just because someone has broken the law by crossing a border does not mean that it is okay to deprive them of basic human rights. If Adriana Torres-Flores had been Nancy Worthington, Nice White Lady Born and Raised in Little Rock, that bailiff would be facing charges right now. But immigrants are only people if they have the documents to prove it in today’s America, I guess.

The reason Adriana Torres-Flores appeared in court was because she was charged with selling pirated CDs. Oh yes, the terrible terrible crime of selling pirated CDs. So let’s compare here: Selling pirated CDs plus being an undocumented brown woman = okay to be deprived of basic human rights. “Forgetting” someone in a cell for four days without food, water or access to the bathroom = nah, not so bad, just suspension without pay and then back to business.

Wow. This is appalling.

A woman was locked for four days in a tiny holding cell in a northern Arkansas courthouse, forgotten by the authorities and left without food or water, the local Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

The woman, Adriana Torres-Flores, 38, a longtime illegal immigrant from Mexico, slept on the floor with only a shoe for a pillow, and with nothing to drink except her own urine, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. There was no bathroom in the cell.

The chief deputy of the county’s sheriff’s department, Jay Cantrell, says there will be an investigation, but assures that the incident was an “honest mistake” without any malicious intent.

Honest mistake? Well, that may be true, but it’s still a mistake that should get your ass thoroughly fired. But there’s no mention of that idea in the article. Only that there will be an “investigation”. What’s there to investigate? The procedures and policies of the department, yes. But the fact that his gross negligence make the employee in question unfit for his job? That seems pretty clear to me. But of course, the victim was only an undocumented brown woman, so it wasn’t all that serious, right.

While we’re into the immigration issue in the USA:
You really should read this article in the New Yorker about Hutto, a former prison in Texas which is being used to detain immigrants and asylum seekers. Note: immigrants and asylum seekers. Not criminals. About half of the detainees in Hutto are children, many of them born in the USA. Hutto is run by CCA, the Correction Corporation of America, a huge private prison corporation. Their deal with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of Homeland Security pays them approximately $2.8 million dollars monthly for Hutto. There’s good money to be made from keeping unwanted noncriminal brown people locked up. Feministe has more on the subject.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has also commented on the “we need to breed”-nonsense that I wrote about yesterday. She also has a video from the Nation that summarizes the article.

And, today in Dagens Nyheter, the latest statistics from SCB (Swedish bureau of statistics), that show that more people are getting married and having children in Sweden than in previous years. Marriages are up 5 percent from 2006 (to the highest number since 1968, if you discount 1989 when a change in law regarding pensions for widows/widowers made many people drive into marriage-ville) and births are up 1.4 percent. In 2006, we had a excess of births over deaths of 15 692. So no, we are not going extinct. Of course, we don’t know how many of those births that are of the “right” babies (you know, blond, blue-eyed and born of God-fearing parents who only had sex to create that baby). But there it is.
If you’re into statistics, SCB has it all in English here.

Kathryn Joyce of The Nation has written a long article called “Missing: the ‘Right’ Babies” about the so called “demographic winter of Europe” - that the “West” is failing to produce enough babies and is in danger of becoming “out-breeded” by the Muslim immigrants and their purportedly numerous offspring. From the article, a quote by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who quit the republican presidential race in the beginning of February:

“Europe is facing a demographic disaster” due to its modernized, secular culture, particularly its “weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for human life and eroded morality.”

This nativist “pro-family” movement is a mess of sexism and nationalism blended with religious extremism. For them, women’s liberation, contraception, gay rights, divorce, abortion, and secular humanism is to blame for the demise of Europe. The movement is spearheaded by American right-wing Christians, but has the backing of politicians and organizations in Europe. Even Muslims are sometimes allowed into the unholy alliance - when it comes to blocking rights for women and gays at the UN, these people are happy to gang up with Iran and Saudi Arabia. But when it comes to babies, they want the right babies - white babies.

But for this to work, women need to dedicate their lives and their wombs to this demographic warfare. And I have a suspicion that the way they want to do this is not by implementing true family-friendly policies: not by ending work place discrimination against women who have children, not by making life easier for single parents, not by improving child care and education, addressing poverty, and ensuring access to equal and affordable health care.

This quote by Paul Mero and Allan Carlson, writers of The Natural Family Manifesto, says it all:

“Above all, we believe in rights that recognize women’s unique gifts of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.”

If they want to get me behind the idea of preserving “Western culture” they will have to include in their definition of this culture all the progress that we have made in the last decades and that makes me happy to live in Sweden: the possibility for women to have careers outside the home or the schoolteacher/nurse option, the advancement in rights for gays and in how non-heterosexuals are viewed in the society, the right to choose one’s own religion or lack thereof, the ability to chose and control the number of children you have, and so on.

But this is not what they wish to preserve. To them, all the things which I see as good and positive developments, are a threat to “our way of life”. In their logic, by allowing freedom for women and freedom of (or from) religion, we are being overrun by people who treat their women miserably and advocates killing all the infidels. Funny how their world views coincide…

(Update: the article is also reprinted over at Alternet; it’s always interesting to read the comments section there.)