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Swedish MP Björn Söder calls on Government to recognize the Armenian Genocide

Swedish MP Björn Söder calls on the Government to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Although the Rikstag adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide back in 2020, no Swedish government has so far acknowledged the genocide.

Björn Söder reminds that in the 2014 election campaign, Stefan Löfven promised to pursue the issue – if the Social Democrats won the election. When he won the election in 2014 and became prime minister, it sounded completely different. In May 2018, the then Prime Minister told SVT: “It is one thing for a parliament to recognize genocide, it is another matter for a government.” And to a direct question about whether the government intended to recognize the genocide, he answered: “The government has no plan for that, no.”

In an answer the following month to a written question from SD, the then foreign minister Margot Wallström replied that it is complicated: “Questions about how a government should relate to, and name, mass abuses far back in time are complicated and contain several international law, constitutional, criminal law and political aspects that we cannot ignore.”

“The social democratic government broke its promises and did not listen to the Riksdag’s decision either. Even the foreign minister succeeding Wallström, Ann Linde, repeated Wallström’s answer and as recently as two years ago on the anniversary of the genocide on April 24, she repeated the concept of “mass abuse”,” Björn Söder says.

“Nor does the current moderate-led government seem to have any interest in recognizing the genocide in accordance with the Riksdag’s decision. The moderates have certainly never been in favor of recognition and voted, in part from the Social Democrats, against the decision in the Riksdag. The current foreign minister Tobias Billström does not want to call it genocide either,” he notes.

Björn Söder pledges to work for the Swedish government, in accordance with the Riksdag’s decision, to recognize the genocide for what it was: a genocide.

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