UN Human Rights to Scrutinize Treatment of Ethnic Minorities in Sweden

MOSCOW, January 26 (Sputnik) — Sweden's treatment of ethnic minorities will feature front and center at the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on Monday.

"[The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination] expressed concern at increasing reports of racially motivated hate speech against visible minorities, including Muslims, Afro-Swedes, Roma and Jews, particularly by some far-right politicians," the UN report said.

According to the report, compiled for the UPR working group by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the rise of far-right movements has contributed to growing intolerance toward ethnic minorities in Sweden.

"UNHCR [Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] stated that there were political parties advocating for a restriction of asylum and immigration policies and that discriminatory statements in political discourse were not uncommon," the report said.

In addition to crimes against ethnic minorities, the UN's other areas of concern in Sweden included a 50-percent increase of sexual violence in over a decade, police brutality, as well as a 100-percent rise in unemployment among disabled people.

On December 8, 2014, a UN working group of experts issued a report raising concern over the treatment of Africans and people of African descent on Swedish soil. Later that month and in early January, a series of arson attacks targeted Swedish mosques, prompting government officials to call for a rejection of xenophobia and protection of religious freedom in the country.

The Universal Periodic Review, a UNHRC process of evaluating a country's progress in protecting fundamental human rights, was established on April 3, 2006. Sweden's first review was conducted in May 2010, with the working group's final report issued the following month, where Islamophobia first appeared as a human rights concern.