”May you be in love with who you want?” The poster has just been put up in my son’s Malmöskola. The text strikes against me when I rushed through the hallway to his classroom, to leave gymnastikpåsen that we forgot in the morgonstressen.
It is the semester’s last day of school. This afternoon it’s going to be shutdown in a nearby church. From a teacher, I hear students practicing the christmas carols, the sounds, the sounds.
the breaks of against julmyset. I stop and read what it says at the bottom of the planschen, with less style:
”No one has the right to decide who you should be with. Do you feel controlled by the people in your neighborhood? There is help to get. Read more on malmo.see/honor ”.
On the next floor in the school building still has a poster taped up. ”You need to keep an eye on your sister?” it says. ”Do you feel pressured to check someone in your neighborhood? No one has the right to force you into it.”
the School environment and affischernas message hurls me ten years back in time, to a kuratorsrum at a secondary school in Landskrona. There, among the scented candles and brochures about depression, set one of the bravest people I’ve met.
Tove.
When I visited her cozy office, she had just helped a young woman to a sheltered accommodation. The father had been beating her for several years, which Tove knew. Now was the young woman worried. The time when the parents believed that she would marry approached. A man in his father’s home village in a mellanösternland was appointed as a husband. When she knocked on Tove’s kuratorsdörr she had just turned eighteen.
– So is it often with the students here. When they reached the age of eighteen, but they know that the parents may never know that they asked for help. I do not have the right to inform them, ” said Tove.
fell in love with another. She wanted to get protection from her own family, and living with her boyfriend. Tove arranged a consultation with the social services, where they went through various possible scenarios. On the basis of the woman’s story decided the social services to arrange for sheltered accommodation for her.
the Father was furious when the daughter suddenly disappeared. He suspected that the Tove helped her, because they have had contact in the past.
” He called me a racist and said that my goal was to destroy immigrant families. ”I have heard that you helped the other girls,” he said.
Soon told the students that the real threat to the curator was circulated on the net. Relatives would beat Her after school. Tove called the police – who said they couldn’t do much until something happened.
Tove got more threats. But she still continued to help the girls, and sometimes boys. Staying in her kuratorsrum a few hours on a December afternoon was a brutal reminder of the hedersförtryck is going on in the Swedish cities. It knocked constantly on the door. One of knackarna was eighteen-year-old Amina. On the surface she was a happy MVG-student – inside-a broken girl who’s been beaten up throughout his childhood. Her brother kicked and beat her and she appeared with a killkompis on the town, she told me.
”Look an arab, and you’ll receive a bad reputation”, said my brother.
Amina told how she was beaten for trifles: she smoked, she noppade eyebrows. Her boyfriend had taken her and threatened to tell her parents about their relationship if she did end. Then the parents would put the blame on her. When the tears was on the way in Tove’s sofa so fought Amina received, so that it was laughter instead.
– I laugh at everything, ” she said.
abstract phenomenon in Aminas world. If the parents knew everything about her life, she would be killed, ” she said before she slipped out of the skolkorridoren.
Tove looked after her. She was furious at the Swedish debate on honor violence, and became the nausea of seeing politicians and commentators disseminate the image to hedersförtryck is a small, marginal phenomenon in Sweden.
this was ten years ago. Today is the awareness bigger. Get the politicians deny any longer that hedersförtryck is a widespread problem in Sweden.
then presented a mapping from Örebro university, sweden, shows that nearly every sixth niondeklassare in the Swedish cities are exposed to hedersförtryck. In Malmö, says 18 per cent of the nines that they do not freely choose their boy – or girlfriend, and 24 per cent that they are expected to be virgins when they marry. Oskuldsnormen is stronger for girls than for boys.
Nine percent of the nines in Malmö is considered to be included in the so-called ”våldsnormsgruppen”. This means that they stated that they have either been exposed to or participated themselves in the ”collective legitimacy in the eyes of violence”: the punishments which are awarded to someone considered to have disgraced the family, ran the risk to get bad reputation or to the family or to the family simply have expected it.
girls and boys in Malmö the risk of violence if they go against the family norms, for example, choose a love partner from a different religion or culture.
One of them is nineteen-year Sara. The last few years she has seen several friends and relatives married off in arranged marriages. A Malmötjej in her neighborhood was just fourteen years old when she when away with a grown man that parents appointed. Swedish authorities tried to intervene, but they had the family and even the young girl against him.
Sara think that the city of Malmö’s new posters against hedersförtryck is good, because they show an awareness of the problem. In particular, she appreciates the text ”you Must keep an eye on your sister?”. She knows several boys who are forced to become the guardian of the female members of the family virtue.
on a poster campaign make much of a difference. To dare to ask for help is a big step. Many children grow up with a fear of school and social services.
”do not Say this to the teacher, then they will come and take you away from us” is something I have been told so many times that I no longer react.
According to Sara’s thoughts on honor and to check on the girls so normalised in some families and neighbourhoods, children and young people to the united states and themselves are embracing the approach.
– Then, you can affischkampanjer from the authorities easily be seen as an attempt to attack their way of life.
the step and seek help from the school or social services is, according to Sara, often strong people who are really in great danger. Young people suffering from “mild hedersförtryck” (Sara’s choice of words) remain invisible.
Sara considers that the Swedish authorities need to improve on to give specific examples of how they can help young people who are being oppressed, so that they dare to seek help. Many children are afraid that a concerned authority shall call for the parents and may worsen an already dangerous situation. It is important to be creative and find smart solutions, and getting vulnerable young people to trust that society can really help them.
politicians get better at powerful push back hedersnormerna, she believes. After being told of yet more Malmövänner married off as teenagers – girls who were once happy and outgoing, but in Sarah’s eyes now quelled into a joyless role as housewife and uppasserska – so she exclaims:
– How can this not be the main fight for Sweden’s feminist movement?
Tove, the brave Landskronakuratorn who lived under the threat, posed the same question ten years late. I had no good answer then either.
