School raps 8-year-old birthday boy for 'discrimination'

Posted By Katie Hunter Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - 10:30 AM Share

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An 8-year-old boy stirred up an unorthodox civil rights debate in Sweden last week after passing out invitations to his birthday party in class. Noticing that he'd failed to invite two students, the boy's teacher confiscated all the invitations, citing the school's duty to fight "discrimination." The case went from the classroom to the school board when the boy's father lodged a complaint with a parliamentary ombudsmen, saying, "No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way."

Sweden, despite its reputation as a Scandinavian bastion of tolerance, still has a problem with homophobic and xenophobic crimes, particularly against Muslims and the Roma people. Not that any of this had anything to do with the birthday party in question. Apparently one of the noninvited classmates had bullied the boy, while the other hadn't invited him to his own birthday bash.

In its misguided efforts to promote tolerance, the school has ended up hurting the feelings of one student -- the birthday boy. Says his father,

My son has taken it pretty hard."

Hopefully some cake and ice cream will cheer him up.

EXPLORE:EUROPE, RACE/ETHNICITY

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TEODORO

11:50 AM ET

July 2, 2008

From the State Dept Link

"The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens, and the law and judiciary provided effective means of dealing with individual instances of abuse. Reported human rights problems included: isolated incidents of excessive police violence; prison overcrowding and lengthy pretrial detention; government surveillance and interference with the right to privacy" sounds like some other country i know.

PHOKAT

3:05 AM ET

July 3, 2008

Crimes v Problems

Something is rotten in the Kingdom of Sweden? I believe you exaggerate the dark side of Sweden when you change the State Departments wording "societal problems" into "crimes". No country is free of problems (or free of crime) but there is still a vast difference of countries where crime is the main issue and those countries where problems such as discrimination is the main issue. Your comment "[...] crimes, particularly against Muslims and the Roma people" seems to have no foundation what so ever in the source that you give. That phrase would to my ears have been more correct for say Russia, where the situation for foreigners and homosexuals is such that they have on many occasions been the victims of crime (with a deadly outcome) and the government does not seem to care. Sweden has both a people and a government concerned with the well-being of people within its borders. Sure things aren't perfect, but since that is impossible to achieve, I don't think your caveat about crime was necessary, especially since it created such a distorted picture of the true state of Sweden.

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