The first demonstration took place on February 7, near the Parliament, in Stockholm. Between 50 and 100 people attended. A second was held in front of Gothenburg City Hall on February 13. This time, the demonstrators were at least 400. And the mobilization continues: Saturday 19, Malmö should host a new rally at the call of the Facebook group Mina rattigheter (“my rights”), which protests against the Swedish child protection services, accused of abusing their power to separate families, and particularly, in recent weeks, Muslim homes.
On the placards, the same slogan, written in English: “Stop kidnapping our children” (“stop kidnapping our children”). First unnoticed, the movement launched in December 2021 now worries the Swedish authorities. In Stockholm, Mikael Tofvesson, operational head of the brand new Psychological Defense Agency, created on 1er January, warns against a disinformation campaign led by “organized way” aiming to “harming Sweden and Swedish interests”.
It all started with the release of a series of videos, at the end of 2021, on the YouTube channel of the Shuoun Islamiya (“Islamic affairs”) platform, which has more than 600,000 subscribers. In the films, shown in Arabic, parents from the Middle East or Africa who have settled in Sweden testify. All have lost custody of their children. The comments claim that they were taken away from them because they were Muslims, in an effort to alienate them from Islam.
Destabilization campaign
In mid-January, George Touma, barber in Skövde, a town of 56,000 inhabitants, 150 kilometers northeast of Gothenburg, discovered the testimony of a man, of Syrian origin, like him. In 2018, this father and his wife lost custody of their five children for abuse, which they deny. Interviewed by the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Mr. Touma, an Assyrian Christian, admits to having been moved by the story. The next day, he travels to northern Sweden to meet the man and his wife and shoot a long video.
On YouTube, the barber has 470,000 subscribers. He usually posts videos where he gives advice by trimming a client’s beard or hair. Posted on January 19, his film about the Syrian couple has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. The Shuoun Islamiya platform shares it on social media. According to the Swedish site Doku, which investigates Islamist circles in Sweden, the man who manages the platform belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt.
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