For decades, the relatives of Swedish citizens unlawfully imprisoned abroad have complained about the insensitive treatment they receive from Swedish officials. Adopting a few relatively simple measures could help fix this problem – bringing relief to both sides.
Av Susanne Berger 5 juli, 2024
Text: Susanne Berger. Senior Fellow, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR).
Two years after Swedish diplomat Raoul G. Wallenberg disappeared from war-torn Budapest in early 1945, his mother, Maj von Dardel, had enough: In March 1947 she walked into the Swedish Foreign Ministry to confront Swedish officials who had refused to share any information about their efforts to locate her son. This pattern would repeat itself again and again until Maj von Dardel’s death in 1979. Her family remembers how she would sit hours next to the phone hoping that Swedish officials would call with news about their search.
In May 2023, the Swedish Ambassador to Israel took the extraordinary step of formally apologizing to Wallenberg’s family “for [the Swedish government] leaving them too alone and without the support they deserved.” Unfortunately, many families of current Swedish political prisoners or hostages find themselves locked into a similar struggle for information with Swedish authorities as Wallenberg’s parents did eight decades ago.
Communicating with the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s consular department that handles the cases of Swedish citizens detained abroad can feel like a war of attrition. Presently, there are no clear mechanisms in place for families to receive regular case updates or for scheduling meetings with Swedish officials. Family members all tell similar stories – the endless wait for news, the rote answers that contain little substance, the need to constantly prod officials for information which is usually conveyed in short and often curt messages.
For the families, this adds enormous stress to what is already a hugely traumatic experience, one that can stretch over many years.
Swedish diplomats argue that they are bound by the strict rules of the Swedish government’s privacy policy, the “duty to silence” (tystnadsplikt). They stress that they are simply not allowed to provide any details about their official contacts. However, many relatives feel that some officials are taking their obligation to silence too far.
“Our experience with the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs … is deeply disappointing,” Ahmadreza Djalali’s wife Vida Mehrannia noted earlier this year. Arrested in 2016, Djalali, a physician and expert on disaster medicine, is Sweden’s longest held prisoner in Iran. He was sentenced to death in 2017, in a rigged trial, on charges of espionage. Mehrannia stressed that she fully appreciates the fact that Swedish officials must shield certain aspects of their work from public scrutiny. “However,” she added, “for the Foreign Ministry, quiet diplomacy seems to imply an almost absolute duty to [maintain] secrecy.”[i]
Mehrannia says that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not contacted her once in the eight years since her husband’s arrest to provide an in-depth assessment of his situation. Last month, Mehrannia received no prior warning and received no explanation from Swedish officials when former Swedish prisoners in Iran Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi were released in a prisoner swap that failed to include Ahmadreza Djalali. His family learned of the news from media reports, just like the rest of the Swedish public.
Even when Swedish officials agree to meet with family members, they tend to offer little meaningful content. The reticent exchange between Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström and Djalali’s family at the beginning of July is a case in point. Billström provided no additional information and or details about Sweden’s official handling of Djalali’s case or what options are under consideration to secure his release.
What Mehrannia describes is not an isolated incident. The family of Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaakwho has been imprisoned in Eritrea for over 22 years has been left for months at a time without any news or contact from the Swedish MFA. The relatives of Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, who in 2020 was sentenced in a closed trial to a ten-year prison term, too, have encountered serious difficulties in their interaction with Swedish authorities.
This state of affairs is all the more regrettable since it is mostly self-inflicted. Efforts undertaken in the US in recent years show that with the necessary political will, the situation could be remedied relatively quickly.
A decade ago, the families of several US hostages held by ISIS forces in Syria faced an almost complete information black-out. The Department of Justice even threatened to prosecute them if they communicated with the hostage takers or tried to raise money to meet the respective ransom demands.
After the US journalist James W. Foley and three other hostages were brutally murdered in 2014, Foley’s parents – through the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation – set out to change official US hostage policy, including the rules that govern how the authorities communicate with hostage families. These efforts resulted in the adoption of the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery Act and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act which, among other things, created a more centralized, inter-agency approach to counteracting hostage taking. It allows for the pooling of expertise and, consequently, a more rapid and flexible response to the varied aspects of each hostage crisis. Just as importantly, it created a mechanism that allows families to receive regular and meaningful updates about official efforts to free their loved ones.
The families of Swedish hostages and political prisoners understand the need for confidentiality and discretion. They appreciate living in a country where the authorities are concerned about the welfare of its citizens. They want Swedish officials to succeed and do everything possible to aid their efforts. In fact, as Gui Minhai’s daughter Angela Gui points out, family members can be a great asset and resource to officials. “They often have access to cultural knowledge and contact networks that diplomats lack,” she says. Freezing families out and treating them in a cold and aloof manner is counterproductive and leads to serious tensions that could be easily avoided.
Assuming their sincerity of purpose, Swedish governmental agencies, in particular the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, could adopt very simple measures that involve few costs and would yield an almost immediate positive impact.
The MFA could choose to appoint a liaison official who is in charge of maintaining contact with family members and who could provide regular basic but meaningful updates. These contacts could be supplemented by more in-depth briefings with higher-level officials, at agreed upon intervals or as the need arises.
While the Swedish MFA is definitely not a social agency, Swedish official could provide referrals to services or organizations that offer emotional and psychological support to affected families. They could also provide basic information about how and where to obtain proper legal counsel. This is especially important for families with a foreign background who may need help with identifying the different options available to them in an unfamiliar system.
If strict secrecy and privacy rules stand in the way of a humane interaction between Swedish authorities and family members of Swedish citizen imprisoned abroad, then Swedish lawmakers should consider the adoption of new legislation to adjust or relax some of these rules. The changes adopted in the U.S. can serve as a useful model.
Swedish officials could try to further intensify communications with human rights organizations that are working to draw attention to the plight of Swedish prisoners held abroad. Human rights activists have repeatedly tried to coordinate public advocacy measures in a more effective ways with Swedish authorities. Here, too, the appointment of a liaison official could help to create a more consistent exchange and bridge the communication gap. A natural candidate would be the office of Sweden’s Ambassador for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law [Ambassadör för mänskliga rättigheter, demokrati och rättsstatens principer] who advocates for compliance with international human rights standards and who already maintains close contacts with many Swedish civil society actors.
Perhaps the most important measure to adopt would be a less restrictive, more personal form of interaction when communicating with families. It does not take much to offer a kind word or to extend a simple gesture of empathy. Such an adjustment by itself would go a very long way to improving relations and maximizing potential rescue efforts.
Text: Susanne Berger. Berger is coordinator of the Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative (RWI-70) and together with her colleague Vadim Birstein she briefed the Swedish Parliament on new findings in Wallenberg case.
[i] “Vår erfarenhet av regeringen och UD är däremot djupt nedslående. Jag förstår att tyst diplomati omfattar moment som inte får komma ut ens till mig och mina barn. … Men för UD tycks tyst diplomati innebära en nära nog absolut tystnadsplikt.”
