An image broken?

The Chilean military junta, with Mendoza first from the left,
Pinochet second from the right

"De stulna barnen" (The Stolen Children) is a shocking Swedish documentary in 4 parts available at SVT Play, but only in the Swedish language (some of the people interviewed speak Spanish). SVT is the public broadcasting corporation. By carrying this material free of charge on their site, SVT has in effect given it official imprimatur. 

It will be interesting, if that´s the word for it, how this production will affect the so-called "image of Sweden" (Sverigebilden), that hallowed Swedish-liberal self-portrait of this little Scandinavian nation as a humanitarian and anti-racist superpower. The liberals panicked during the migrant crisis when Trump, Tim Pool and the US Alt Right (and shadowy Russian influence agents behind every bush) supposedly "attacked the Image of Sweden" by talking about crime statistics, no-go zones and what not. And while "De stulna barnen" isn´t a critical look at Afghan immigration, crime, COVID lockdowns or other hot button topics du jour (SVT would never carry *such* material), I think it challenges the holy Image of Sweden on a far deeper level.

Yes, it´s about international adoptions.

The investigative crew behind "De stulna barnen" has taken a closer look at the adoption industry in Chile, or rather the *Swedish* adoption industry branching out to that particular South American nation. The reporters believe there is plenty of good evidence that many Chilean children were stolen from their parents by unscrupulous adoption agents, and then sent to Sweden. Both the police, the parliament and the media in Chile think the same thing. But for a very long time, decades even, Sweden was in denial about what was going on. 

The parents were told that their children had died, either at the maternity ward, or during visits to hospitals. Some were kidnapped from political prisoners. Many of the families who got their kids stolen in this way are Mapuches. The Mapuche are a Native minority group in southern Chile. The "spider in the web" was Anna Maria Elmgren, known as Aja, who worked with the Swedish embassy in Santiago and also with Adoptionscentrum (AC) in Sweden, an organization responsible for international adoptions. Aja (who lives in Chile) has denied the allegations in letters to Chilean newspapers, but she refused to get interviewed when contacted by SVT. 

What makes the above especially galling is the following. In 1973, the military took power in Chile in a bloody coup, a coup led by the notorious Augusto Pinochet. Sweden was one of the nations most sharply condemning the coup. Indeed, many Chileans fleeing the junta got asylum in Sweden. Yet, it was *at this very time* that AC started working with Aja *who was married to a police officer with connections to General Mendoza, a member of Pinochet´s governing junta*. (Mendoza was the head of the militarized Chilean police force, the Carabineros.) If the allegations against Aja are true, Sweden has been implicated in Pinochet´s human rights violations.

Or perhaps not. Another bizarre fact is that the Chilean police themselves suspected Aja of foul play and tried to start an investigation against her! Let that sink in: even the police forces of the highly repressive military regime wondered what the heck the well-connected Swedish lady was up to. What saved her was her husband´s connections to Mendoza, and the generally corrupt character of the Chilean judiciary and bureaucracy. The documentary strongly implies that Aja bribed select people in Chile with money procured from AC´s members in Sweden...

The role of AC is a curious one. On the one hand, AC is an independent organization. On the other hand, however, they seem to function as a kind of quasi-governmental agency, a quango if you like, since international adoptions are considered an important part of Swedish activities abroad (and "evidence" for our hallowed status as a champion of human rights). The present leader of the Conservative Party, Ulf Kristersson, was head of AC 20 years ago, when the allegations of child abductions from Chile first surfaced. His response was to do nothing and criticize those who wanted to do something. A government report demanded more transparency in international adoptions, something Kristersson opposed with the (intriguing to be sure) argument that it would stop almost all Third World adoptions to Sweden! Kristersson flatly refused to be interviewed by the reporters behind "De stulna barnen". His press secretary, in true Soviet fashion, demanded to see the questions in advance and then unilaterally decided that Kristersson wouldn´t do any interviews. She even refused to say whether Kristersson himself ever read the questions at all! 

AC *did* agree on an interview, and here the documentary turns really, really weird. The two AC spokespeople look like cult leaders or alien body snatchers in skin suits when they try to explain the NGO´s position. Later, AC flatly refuses any more interviews "for the good of our members" (whatever that even means). In the interview they did give, the AC alien quangocrats essentially accuse all Chilean mothers of blatant lying! Former AC operatives interviewed say that they never doubted Aja and still feel completely confident that nothing untoward happened. 

While all the above is, to put it mildly, bad, the real rabbit hole goes deeper, as pointed out in my blog post "Race pessimism in reverse", a review of leftist gadfly Tobias Hübinette´s book "Adopterad". Hübinette, a critic of international (Third World) adoptions, documents how such adoptions were *explictly* part of Sweden´s "anti-racist" and "multi-culturalist" (and yet strangely "color blind") politics, and also an important part of the enlightened liberal self-identity. If this liberal social engineering turns out to have fueled what essentially amounts to child trafficking, the Image of Sweden will get a body blow from which it may never recover, even among its friends and allies. Adoption seems to be a *religion* for many of these people. It seems another god has failed! In all fairness, the Swedish Parliament (at the initiative of the Left Party) decided just the other day to launch an official investigation into both Chilean and other Third World adoptions, with the government parties (Social Democrats and Greens) bizarrely voting against the proposal, so perhaps *something* of the Image could still be salvaged. However, it´s equally likely that even more compromising facts will be revealed. 

Welcome to 2021.