civil servants denounce “the establishment of a sort of police state” after the tabling of a bill on the denunciation of undocumented immigrants

This is a very controversial bill in Sweden: Swedish civil servants obliged to denounce undocumented immigrants with whom they are in contact. This text is supported by the right-wing government in Sweden, allied with the far-right party, which wants at all costs to accelerate the expulsion of illegal immigrants. Except that this bill faces very strong opposition even within Swedish public services.

Officials have already called for “civil disobedience”. “No one, no teacher, school principal, doctor, nurse, librarian, has committed himself to his profession to denounce !”, protests Johanna Jaara Åstrand, president of the teachers’ union. “The police do their job, we do ours. It is important in a rule of law like Sweden that everyone stays in their role.” she insists.

Denouncing their undocumented patients is out of the question: 4,000 caregivers have signed a platform to denounce a proposed law that goes against the Hippocratic Oath. “It will have public health impacts: untreated illnesses that become serious, the spread of infectious diseases…”explains Michèle Le Voy, president of PICUM, an NGO defending the rights of undocumented immigrants. “Undocumented immigrants are already quite marginalized, so such a proposal is extremely negative, it would be the establishment of a sort of police state,” she denounces.

The risks incurred by civil servants who do not comply with the reporting order have not yet been defined. The parliamentary fact-finding mission on this highly controversial bill will last until the fall.