Swedish party official under fire after calling Anne Frank ‘immoral’
STOCKHOLM — A Sweden Democrats official was suspended by the far-right party for making degrading comments about Jewish teenage diarist Anne Frank.
In an Instagram posting that has now been deleted, Rebecka Fallenkvist called Anne “immoral” among other things, according to Swedish media.
Anne, who wrote a diary while in hiding in Amsterdam before she was captured, died at age 15 in Nazi Germany’s Bergenbelsen concentration camp in February 1945.
The posting by Fallenkvist, head of television programming for the Sweden Democrats, prompted strong reactions from Jewish groups and Israeli Ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman, who in a tweet said: “I strongly condemn this despicable insult, disrespectful of the memory of Anne Frank.”
The Sweden Democrats’ media director, Oskar Cavalli-bjorkman, told the Swedish news agency TT late Saturday that the party would take Fallenkvist’s “insensitive and inappropriate” comments seriously and launch an internal investigation on the matter.
While it remained unclear what kind of point Fallenkvist, 26, wanted to make with her comments on Anne’s diary, she sent later a text message to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter saying she had been misinterpreted.
“The book is a moving depiction of human good and evil,” Fallenkvist said in her message to the newspaper. “The good Anne, who in the first chapters is like any other young girl living her life in peace and finding an interest in boys (which I highlighted), is contrasted with the evil of Nazism. My story was aimed at the good and human in Anne while not playing down the evil to which she was subjected.”
Sweden Democrats was founded in the 1980s by people who had been active in right-wing extremist groups, including neo-nazis. The party emerged as Sweden’s second-largest party in the Sept. 11 election under the leadership of Jimmie Akesson.
Iranian prison fire: A towering blaze at a prison housing political prisoners and anti-government activists in Iran’s capital killed four inmates, the country’s judiciary said Sunday.
Flames and thick smoke rising from Tehran’s Evin Prison had been widely visible Saturday night, as nationwide anti-government protests triggered by the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody entered a fifth week.
The blaze was extinguished after several hours and no detainees escaped, state media said.
British politics: The new U.K. Treasury chief on Sunday insisted Prime Minister Liz Truss retains control of her government despite having to roll back her signature economic policies weeks into her premiership.
Jeremy Hunt was drafted in to lead the Treasury after Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng amid rising pressure following the turbulent market reaction to the new administration’s “mini-budget.”
“The prime minister’s in charge,” Hunt, a former foreign and health secretary, told the BBC when he was asked whether he now held all the power at Downing Street.
Truss and Kwarteng
had slowly unraveled key elements of their economic vision, including tax cuts for top earners and a halt on corporation tax rises, before the prime minister gave in to financial market instability and tanking polling figures and fired Kwarteng.
Hunt has now said taxation will rise and public spending will shrink, despite Britain’s growing cost-of-living crisis.
Catholic Church reform:
Pope Francis has decided to extend by a year a lengthy global consultation of ordinary Catholics about the future of the Catholic Church, amid limited participation by the laity and seeming resistance to his reforms from the hierarchy.
Francis announced Sunday that the planned 2023 gathering of bishops would now take place in two stages — one session in October 2023 and a second in October 2024 — to allow more time to find a way forward.
Francis in 2021 formally opened a two-year consultation
process on the topic of “synodality,” or a more decentralized structure of the church with the laity having a greater role. The process is part of Francis’ long-term goal of making the church more inclusive, participatory and responsive to real-world issues facing ordinary Catholics.
As part of the process, the Vatican asked dioceses, religious orders and other Catholic groups to embark on local listening sessions so ordinary Catholics could talk about their needs and hopes for the church. Bishops conferences in August reported back the results, and an organizing committee recently met near Rome and completed a synthesis document.
But several dioceses and bishops conferences reported minimal participation.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, reported 700,000 people participated in the consultation, in a country of 66.8 million Catholics.
Haitian crisis: The U.S. and Canada sent armored vehicles and other supplies to Haiti over the weekend to help police fight a powerful gang amid a pending request from the Haitian government for the immediate deployment of foreign troops.
A U.S. State Department statement said the equipment was bought by Haiti’s government, but it did not provide further details on the supplies flown on military aircraft to the capital of Port-au-prince.
A spokesman for the U.S. military’s Southern Command said he could not provide further details on the supplies sent, though he added it was a joint operation involving the U.S. Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force.
“This equipment will assist (Haiti’s National Police) in their fight against criminal actors who are fomenting violence and disrupting the flow of critically-needed humanitarian assistance, hindering efforts to halt the spread of cholera,” the State
Department said.
The Pan American Health Organization said there are more than 560 suspected cases of cholera, some 300 hospitalizations and at least 35 deaths, with experts warning the numbers are likely much higher than what’s being reported.
Pledge against polio: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says it will commit $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide.
The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026. The initiative is trying to end the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two endemic countries, the foundation said in a statement Sunday.
The money also will be used to stop outbreaks of new variants of the virus.
The announcement was made Sunday at the World Health Summit in Berlin.