Misinformation about Swedish Social Service and LUV act is getting too far.

28 comments

1. There has definitely been some push-back from Swedish media, the problem is those newspapers don’t really reach all of the people who read the arabic language newspapers. It seems like the only way to fight back would be to stop the misinformation, but this could be seen as a violation of their freedom of speech, which may in turn simply add more fuel to the fire as this could be seen by some as more oppression.

   It’s a very volatile situation.

2. Although a scary and volatile situation, do you think it might reduce the popularity of Sweden as a place for them to move to? To be honest that might be a good thing if so :

3. It’s a sad situation, where Sweden is being portrayed as you describe, entirely without merit whatsoever.

   Just like in most countries, there are laws that protect children from sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and so on. But removing a child from it’s family is very rare and authorities always try to work with the families in question before any such measure is even considered. Social services are actually obliged to do so. You can research the law in question by yourself, it’s called Lagen om vård av unga (LVU). It applies in the absolute ugliest of cases (think repeated rape, repeated physical harm, alcohol and/or drug abuse causing mental illnesses, extreme neglect of small children, etc).

   But once again, children are never “abducted” or anything like that. It’s actually “very hard” for a family to fall under this category in the first place. Many missteps have to be taken before LVU is even on the table.

   The phenomenon about the misinformation has indeed hit mainstream media several times, but one could argue that such media are rarely consumed by the demographic in question. Even you yourself is writing in English, not in Swedish, hence wouldn’t be reading those news.

   And, it would hardly make social media trolls go away, right? Anyone who understands how social media works can see that.

   Actually I think it’s good that we don’t allow mainstream media get too worked up about this, since adding more fuel to the fire might cause the situation to escalate beyond control.

   Not saying we shouldn’t protect our democracy and our values, but the amount of national news that actually have been reported has been (in my option), fairly proportional to the size and scope of the issue.

4. Oh, they for sure got warnings

5. This conspiracy theory is not new. There have been numerous protests about this before, from crazy Swedes with no foreign background.

   I think solving conspiracy theories is a hard problem. It is never _really_ about the particular issue they purport to be concerned about, and they could switch issue at any time.

   It sounds bad that they are promoting violence but that is unfortunately also not uncommon with conspiracy theorists :/

   As for this particular problem, Swedish media has discussed it a lot this last year I think.

6. It’s not true but if u guys wanna believe it then do it. There’s nothing Swedish government or media can do about changing Arabic speaking peoples mind. And as long as u stay clear from Sweden because of this fear I’m content with it.

7. In short its extremely expensive and labor intensive to apply for LVU and it usually takes months of work for two or more staff – with the support of pretty much all collegues in the office. The application then has to be approved by both local politicians and then the court. This is not done for fun, profit or to kidnap anyone.

   As someone who’s worked in the social services before, my opinion is that the LVU is used way too restrictive.You can get away with being quite abusive as it is now.
   This applies to both native swedish children and to immigrant children.

   This is due to budgeting (and the management/politicians holding the workers back), shortness of staff, a naive superstition that bad people want the best for their children etc. There are more and more cases where the children are already permanently damaged by trauma and neglect when the social services finally take action.

8. Sweden has an institute against misinformation now: https://www.mpf.se/en/
   Maybe copy-paste your text in an email to them?

9. The people you describe are basically “useful idiots” to whatever actors are trying to divert attention from very real problems in their home societies…with social media and the “economics of outrage” its almost too easy…

   If that part of the world continues to be hostile to swedish interests, they can deal with it themselves the next time an oppressive state crumbles in the region…maybe they are better off staying where they are or in a neighbouring country…I dont think well be worse off…

10. This is a well coordinated misinformation campaign, orchestrated by Russia most likely.

    A couple of years ago the same thing happened In Norway. Then it was targeted against Eastern Europeans. The child protective service took custody of some children that were exposed to physical and mental abuse by their parents, offcourse the Russian trolls took full advantage of this and misrepresented the information, they even organized demonstrations outside Norwegian embassies.

    Now it seems they have targeted Sweden. If you have critical thinking skills, ask your self why should child protection services take away a child from a home?

    Since most Arab countries are low educated and prone to emotional outbursts instead of calmly thinking things through, this is very effective propaganda.

11. TL:DR you likely have nothing to worry about with your family, but please do consider reporting any videos encouraging violence.

    I honestly don’t think you need to worry for yourself or your daughter. The cases where Arabic immigrant families have had their children taken away would only have arisen after a lot of other things have happened and also likely due to the parents inability to effectively understand and communicate with the social services. In Sweden we generally are quite shit at integrating refugees and the like, and they’ve probably not been properly informed about what is and is not ok when it comes to how you treat children regardless of in or out of your home if you are in Sweden.

    If there are videos or posts that you come across that are urging people to commit violence then I’d suggest reporting it to the police or maybe even säpo (assuming they have a reporting process).

    And as some have mentioned these “reports” build on a small truth (some have had their children taken) with massive modification (the reasons why, what happens to the children, what rights the parents have etc) likely driven on by states that don’t like Sweden, e.g. Russia but I’ve also seen it reported by Al Jazeera and some Turkish news sites.

12. Not sure why anyone should care to be truthful.

    Dumb unintelligent people will always believe silly things like the world is flat or that vaccinations are bad for our civilisation, 5g gives viruses etc..

    If stupid people think Sweden is bad i for one am glad if that makes them stay away from here.

    You can’t fix stupid. But you don’t need to import it.

13. There is a crime called ”uppvigling” (sedition).
    I wonder if it would be possible to report those who openly support the death of ethnic swedes or LVU workers?

    I personally don’t see why so many immigrants are complaining. Just move somewhere else if you don’t agree with our way of living. Simple as that.

14. Thank you for making this post. You are right, we don’t talk enough about this misinformation issue. I was made aware of these absurd allegations about two years ago from my friend in Egypt but I could never imagine that anyone in their right mind would believe it. I’ve since talked to close friends who work with kids about how the law is actually implemented and what to respond when we meet this propaganda. And of course, the end goal for socialen is always to have parents be with their children whenever that is possible. But it’s hard to say anything when the premise itself is so absurd – what would the motive be? The claims seem to be that we need Arab children to repopulate the country since we can’t have children of our own or something along those lines. Morals aside, don’t they realise how expensive that would be?

15. I remember when these news first began to spread in February of this year. At the time Socialtjänsten (Social Services) did go out and deny the allegations, but they also stressed that their reach was minimal. The language barrier is har dot overcome, both in the communication between Socialtjänsten and newly migrated parents, and in the communication between Swedish media and the rest of the world.

    Lately the Swedish media have given this topic very little to no attention, whilst the international coverage is still active, contributing to the online discourse being harsh.

16. Bra sagt ✊🏻

17. Im actually scared by all this, I have loved ones working with these things and I fear someone is going to take violent action based on lies.

    Th function of Swedish social service is to protect children who are mistreated by their parents, be it by physical or psychological violence, neglect, forced underage marriage, drug/alcohol abuse or other harmful actions

    As others have said they dont simply walk in unannounced and grab children without reason, there are investigations including interviews with the child, parents, school personnel, Police, health services etc, and the social service themselves do not decide wether or not to separate children from their parents, they, as educated experts make recommendations for other instances to make the decision.

    Social services does NOT recommend separating children from their parents if it isnt absolutely necessary to do so, everyone in the service knows how damaging it can be for children to be separated from their parents and put in a home with complete strangers, it has to be agreed upon that its absolutely more harmful if they stay

    “lilla hjärtat” is a worst case scenario where bad parents won in court against the recommendations of the social service leading to the death of a very small child.

    Edit: thank you OP for speaking out

18. I remember some article talking about how the independent news site [Alkompis](https://alkompis.se/) made a serious effort to fact check the statements of some of the affected families around this, and explain how the Swedish social services work (and what they can and can’t do).

    Unfortunately that had only limited impact as a lot of readers decided to treat their reporting pretty much like how the Swedish alt-right does when it comes to our own mainstream media.

19. I am so glad you posted this. I am a Hungarian married to a Palestinian and living happily in Sweden. At the beginning of the year we were thinking about starting a family but then for several reasons (one being the world going crazy 😂🤣) decided to postpone it. One of the other reasons was all these videos about the social services kidnapping children. While we don’t believe them it did generate a lot of negative and unrealistic thoughts and worries in our minds. So it’s a bit reassuring to see we are not the only ones with unrealistic worries.

20. Yes we know, reams of articles have been written about it and it’s been noticed at the highest political levels but there is such an absurd segregation over here that we can’t do much about it.

21. Yea no, don’t move here, we kidnap children.

22. Probably the work of Chinese or Russian internet trolls, they hate Sweden.

23. I think these types of conspiracies among Middle Easterners towards Westerners are in general quite common? Westerners are a very convenient scapegoat as a big bad external enemy to point at. Vaccines making them sterile, and gay etc. Westerners have this as well ofc but in the Middle East the “antagonists” are usually Westerners?

    And combine that with a society that is generally way too meak to stand up for itself like Sweden this hatred it will easily gain traction.

24. It should also be noted that the situation has been exacerbated and magnified by right-wing racists and anti-immigrant members of SD, who have been “told” to go into the comments and be as aggressive as possible towards Arabs. They don’t *want* the misinformation to stop, because they want immigrants to stop thinking of Sweden as a “good” destination. Then add to this actual state actors who find it useful to bash Sweden, who’s usually on their case about those pesky human rights.

    In reality, considering the amount of refugees Sweden has taken in, statistically a few of them will hit or abuse their children, and will (most often temporarily) have their children taken away – just like it is for Swedes, or any other ethnicity. The problem is when all of them go on YouTube, making it seem like what is just a handful of cases is some sort of ongoing conspiracy. In reality it is *incredibly* hard to get approval for a LVU; these people must have fucked up consistently.

    The irony is, as these stories take hold of these communities, families will stop cooperating with the social services, maybe hiding their kids, refusing to let them go outside, not sending them to school, etc – all reasons their kids can eventually be taken from them.

25. We help and we help and we help at our own expense and we always get shit on by these fucking people

26. Folk som tror att LVU används för att kidnappa och konvertera muslimska barn får mer än gärna lämna landet, sådana idioter är knappast en tillgång för någon.

27. The main thing everyone should know. Never ever take anything written on reddit or any other social media platform as truth. Your general (and this go for everyone) perception of youtube/twitter/reddit/tikton etc is that they are not telling you a true story about anything.

28. My ex abducted our children to an Arab country two years ago.

    Now he’s, among other things, using these videos as proof that he made the right call.

    The fact that we had no prior contact with Social services or the police is irrelevant to him. He claims that Social services will steal the kids if he returns with them.