Jojje Olsson”People who live in glass houses should not throw stones” is a widely used idiom in Sweden. And seldom has this piece of advice been more applicable than when the Chinese government last week accused Sweden of islamophobia.
This week’s satire here at Kinamedia by cartoonist Niklas ”@Kludd-Niklas” Eriksson portrays Xi Jinping busy carrying out his genocide against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwest of China, while simultaneously attacking a Swedish police officer for mistreating religious minorities.
During the Easter holiday, violent riots plagued several Swedish cities, as Rasmus Paludan, leader for Danish party Stram Kurs and a politician openly hostile towards Islam, was on a so-called ”election tour” with the intention of burning a copy of the Quran in a handful of different places.
The intensity of the riots taking shape as a result of the planned meetings was widely underestimated by the Swedish police, as 104 police officers were injured and several police cars torched together with public property such as buses and a school.
According to Sweden’s National Police Commissioner, criminal gangs had a hand in organising the riots, and that the rioters on several occasions actually tried to kill police officers.
Despite this, police officers showed remarkable restraint, retreating instead of using force, and making relatively few arrests among hundreds or possibly over a thousand of rioters that showered them with stones and Molotov cocktails over the long weekend.
But this was not restraint enough for Beijing. When Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was askes about the events at a press conference last week, he offered the following answer:
China always opposes extreme behavior of attacking people with different religious beliefs and instigating conflicts between civilizations. Freedom of speech should not be used as an excuse to incite racial or cultural discrimination and create division in society.
(…)
It is hoped that Sweden will draw a lesson from the matter and earnestly respect the religious beliefs of Muslims and other minority groups, protect their lawful rights and interests, and square their words of respecting and protecting freedom of religious belief with actions.
It’s easy to find this rhetoric laughable at best and offensive as worst, when Chinese authorities is conducting a genocide against its own Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
But as I explained here on Kinamedia last week, in Swedish, this kind of projection and desinformation are surprisingly efficient and serves several purposes.
This week’s cartoon can be viewed in full size via this link.
A full collection of Kludd-Niklas’ works for Kinamedia can be seen here.
