Even before he has been sentenced, Swedish street artist Dan Park has already been jailed for repeating an offense he may not have committed and the prosecutor wants him declared insane.
Whatever one may think of the Swedish street artist Dan Park, there is no denying that he has a gift for attracting publicity.
On March 19 he was accused of ”denigration of ’folkgrupp’” (”folkgrupp” is the Swedish term for specially protected segments of the population, such as Muslims, Gypsies, homosexuals and women – but not the original Swedes nor men in general).
This is the second time Mr. Park has had to answer for denigration. Among his most recent crimes is to have displayed a sign with the text ”Zigenarbrott är något gott” (”Gypsy crime is fine”) and a picture of three African heads with a noose around their neck. The text reads: ”Hang-on Afrofobians”.
According to the prosecutor, this must be seen as clear encouragement to lynch blacks. Dan Park has a different explanation: It is a satirical presentation of reality, precisely because – contrary to claims that Sweden is full of ”Afrophobes” – people of color are not persecuted in Sweden. There are no blacks hanging from the trees in Malmö. Nonetheless the spokesman for the Swedish Afroförbundet (The Association of Africans) claims that Africans are being grievously hounded. This is the hypocrisy Dan Park says he has tried to expose.
Exposure of hypocrisy was also the intention behind the text about Gypsy crime being fine. It is a fine thing for those on the politically correct left whose aim is to benefit by presenting gypsies as unjustly maligned and thus playing the victimization card.
Whether Dan Park has succeeded in stating his case is a matter of opinion and there is no doubt that the public prosecutor thinks he has failed miserably.
The Malmö court is yet to pass sentence on whether Dan Park has committed a crime or not.
On March 20, the day after Dan Park’s arraignment, Dispatch International published an article about his case, showing the pictures that are now under adjudication. – a common journalistic practice, it would appear, in any country enjoying the rule of law.
Dan Park republished DI’s article on the same day, which caused the prosecutor to have him arrested and jailed for having repeated a crime that had not yet been determined to be a crime. In fact, all Dan Park had done was to republish an article anyone could read by clicking on to Dispatch International.
But worse was to come a few days later, when prosecutor Magnus Pettersson asked the court to force Dan Park to undergo a psychiatric examination – seemingly based on the contention that the unfortunate artist’s action might be ascribed to clinical insanity.
In other words, we have a crime that has not been determined to be a crime. We have a repeat offense that may not be an offense because there may not have been a crime in the first place and on this basis the representative of the Swedish state has a man put in prison and forced to have his head examined.
There is every indication that Dan Park’s real crime is to have offended against Sweden’s prevailing state ideology that mass immigration is an unquestionable boon to the country and that only lunatics could think otherwise.
The Public prosecutor’s use of Soviet-style methods has caused Dispatch International Chief Editor Ingrid Carlqvist to leave Sweden for fear that she may be next in line to be locked up in some insane asylum.
