Malmö 'street artist' Dan Park jailed again for hate crimes
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Published: 9 Nov, 2018 CET.
Updated: Fri 9 Nov 2018 13:57 CET
The Malmö-based provocateur Dan Park has been sentenced to three months in jail for hate crimes, after tweets in which he used the term 'blattar' to describe immigrants, and claimed rape was normal in their cultures.
"According to the court, it should be seen as incontestable that the word 'blattar' is a denigrating term for people of non-Nordic origin," presiding judge Jacob Heister and three lay judges ruled in the unanimous judgement, seen by The Local.
"According to the court, it is obvious that that the statement is disparaging to people on account of their ethnic origin, with the claim that they 'love rape'".
Park shot to infamy in 2011 when he created and distributed posters with a picture of Momodou Jallow, then chair of the National Afro-Swedish Association and now a Left Party MP, superimposed on the image of a naked man in chains. "Our negro slave has run away," read the text on the posters.
Jallow claimed the posters were racist and offensive, while Park argued that the purpose of the posters was to highlight the issue of free speech. Park was sentenced to six months in jail for the case in 2014.
On Thursday, Park was found guilty of five of seven new charges of race hatred, and one case of defamation for three Twitter posts and four blog entries he made in 2015 and 2016, two of which were reposts of the cartoons for which he had previously been sentenced.
As well as tweeting "that male blattar like rape is nothing new", he also tweeted that "rape culture is fundamental and OK among MENA [Middle East and North African] people", and tweeted a cartoon of a black man's head with a pipe in his mouth, along with a caption which contained the offensive N-word slur.
In the judgement, Heister noted that this same picture had already been deemed hate crime by in a previous case, and that there was no reason for him to rule differently.
Heister rejected Park's claim that someone else had made the posts, either by using his Twitter account after he failed to log out from a computer at Malmö's public library, or because he had given out his log-in details while drunk.
"This is deemed by the court as so far-fetched that it can be left out of consideration," Heister wrote.
As well as the Twitter posts, Park was also found guilty of race hate for reposting the "negro slave" cartoon of Jallow as well as another Jallow poster with the word "Hang-on afrofobians", on his blog.
Heister noted that courts had previously ruled both cartoons as hate crimes, and that by republishing them, Park had once again committed a crime, ordering Park to pay Jallow 15,000 kronor in damages.
"It is obvious that the picture is extremely offensive and that Jallow therefore has the right to receive damages due to it being published again," he said.
Park was also found guilty of one further case of race hate for a blog entry showing a new cartoon of eight African heads in a ship, with a caption which used a racist slur along with the words "the rape boat".
Comments
See Also
"According to the court, it should be seen as incontestable that the word 'blattar' is a denigrating term for people of non-Nordic origin," presiding judge Jacob Heister and three lay judges ruled in the unanimous judgement, seen by The Local.
"According to the court, it is obvious that that the statement is disparaging to people on account of their ethnic origin, with the claim that they 'love rape'".
Park shot to infamy in 2011 when he created and distributed posters with a picture of Momodou Jallow, then chair of the National Afro-Swedish Association and now a Left Party MP, superimposed on the image of a naked man in chains. "Our negro slave has run away," read the text on the posters.
Jallow claimed the posters were racist and offensive, while Park argued that the purpose of the posters was to highlight the issue of free speech. Park was sentenced to six months in jail for the case in 2014.
On Thursday, Park was found guilty of five of seven new charges of race hatred, and one case of defamation for three Twitter posts and four blog entries he made in 2015 and 2016, two of which were reposts of the cartoons for which he had previously been sentenced.
As well as tweeting "that male blattar like rape is nothing new", he also tweeted that "rape culture is fundamental and OK among MENA [Middle East and North African] people", and tweeted a cartoon of a black man's head with a pipe in his mouth, along with a caption which contained the offensive N-word slur.
In the judgement, Heister noted that this same picture had already been deemed hate crime by in a previous case, and that there was no reason for him to rule differently.
Heister rejected Park's claim that someone else had made the posts, either by using his Twitter account after he failed to log out from a computer at Malmö's public library, or because he had given out his log-in details while drunk.
"This is deemed by the court as so far-fetched that it can be left out of consideration," Heister wrote.
As well as the Twitter posts, Park was also found guilty of race hate for reposting the "negro slave" cartoon of Jallow as well as another Jallow poster with the word "Hang-on afrofobians", on his blog.
Heister noted that courts had previously ruled both cartoons as hate crimes, and that by republishing them, Park had once again committed a crime, ordering Park to pay Jallow 15,000 kronor in damages.
"It is obvious that the picture is extremely offensive and that Jallow therefore has the right to receive damages due to it being published again," he said.
Park was also found guilty of one further case of race hate for a blog entry showing a new cartoon of eight African heads in a ship, with a caption which used a racist slur along with the words "the rape boat".
Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.