In Sweden, supporting Israel can get you fired

We often hear about bloggers having to fight for they’re freedom of speech in countries like Iran or China. This is why I found the next story surprising, it turns out that in Sweden supporting Israel can cost you your job. I bet most of you did not get a chance to read about this 2 years old story:

A man that has been employed at the Swedish Migration Board since the 1980s has been fired for running a outspoken blog about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The pro-Israeli blog was started by Lennart Eriksson in 2003 and didn’t initially cause much trouble for the blogger, other than that his boss at the time required that he removed a link to the Migration Board from the blog.

But when Eriksson got a new boss in 2007, things changed. The new boss didn’t think that his one-sided support for Israel was compatible with his position as head of a group that handles asylum applications (since the conflict was creating many asylum seekers). So Eriksson was transferred to a lower position, which the District Court of Mölndal later decided equates to a termination of employment. The Court also stated that the grounds for this termination were illegal and that Eriksson had the right to get his old job back.

But the Migration Board refused to accept the verdict of the court and used a paragraph in the law for the protection of employment, which states that the employer can choose to terminate an employment but instead have to pay damages. This meant that the Migration Board had to pay Eriksson’s salary for 32 months plus damages, which totalled 1.3 million SEK, or 165,000 USD.

Thank you Lennart Eriksson for fighting for your freedom of speech and freedom of thought, your fight is our fight.