Swedish professor
slams New Zealand MP
Professor
Jacob W F Sundberg's letter to Kathryn Rich
|
This
letter is published here with the kind consent of the author. |
INSTITUTET FÖR
OFFENTLIG OCH INTERNATIONELL
RÄTT Stockholm,
May 24, 2007
Uggelviksgatan 9
S-114 27 Stockholm
Tel. 08-21 62 44, 11 49
89
Fax (+) 46-8-21 38 74
Ms Kathryn Rich, MP
Parliament Buildings
Molesworth Street
Wellington 6160
New Zealand
Fax 0064-4 471 25 51
Dear Ms Rich.
The text of your recent speech in Parliament, given May 16, 2007, was
brought to my attention and since it shows a number of misunderstandings of the
Swedish legal landscape, I have considered it called for to contribute some
clarifications. Hopefully, they will mitigate the application in New Zealand of
the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act, and for such reasons I think
this letter should be distributed to all the MP:s.
First of all, however, I categorically reject your characterization of
Mrs Ruby Harrold- Claesson as a “false expert” and a “fruit loop, to say the
least”. You have fallen prey to a smear campaign run in Sweden by some of her
adversaries in the social bureaucracy and by their leftist chums in the Faculty
of Law in Stockholm, you mention Dr Diesen but there are more of that same
breed. On this count, I regret that you have not been aware of my letter of
January 11, 2007 to Ms Deborah Coddington which explains the situation,
and I feel entitled now to include a copy of that letter for your consideration.
Secondly, as a matter of fact all the examples of bad treatment of
children that you mention in your speech seem to be such as fall under the
criminalization of assault and battery in Swedish penal law, a long standing
criminalization, antedating the legislation of 1979 which you use as a model
for the NZ law reform. Consequently, your examples are simply not relevant.
Thirdly, then, what is the 1979 legislation about? The centrepiece is
the phrase which I set out in my letter to Ms Coddington “A child may not be exposed to corporal
chastisement or other insulting treatment”. You will perhaps recall that when
the matter was introduced in Sweden, there was very little Swedish discussion :
“Characteristically for Sweden, public debate on the issue was muted” it was
said in Time Magazine, April 2, 1979, p. 24.
But a parallel to the Swedish legislation was introduced in neighbouring
Finland with a very active, Swedish-speaking elite (1983).
This piece of legislation – Act on the custody of children and visiting
rights (lag ang. vårdnad om barn och umgängesrätt : FFS 1983 No 361) –
has a provision which is almost verbatim a copy of the Swedish provision, but
in Finland it released a public discussion among the lawyers responsible for
the drafting of the provision which is quite explicit - in contrast to what
took place in Sweden. The main purpose
of the act as discussed among the Finnish lawyers was to abolish the line of
subordination between parents and children. For such reasons, the family tie
could never be a defence in case of opposition between parents and child. This
had fargoing consequences. You could not do anything to your child that you
could not do to a stranger passerby in the street. That includes all forms of
punishment, and it is interesting to note that even the question of libel and
slander is being discussed, as indeed ‘psychological violence’ practiced upon a
child – e.g. ironizing over a child’s stupid remarks. It is true that one
expert thought that court cases of children complaining of being libelled and
slandered by their parents were unlikely to occur and so far I have not heard
of any such cases, but they certainly were possible the way the legislation was
drafted. The following categorical remark of the Government’s legal draftsman,
Matti Savolainen, would seem to close the discussion : “There is from now no
relationship of subordination, no right to force or punish a child that could
be a defence against a prosecution” “The relationship of subordination between
parents and children is explicitly abolished.”
This emancipation of the children from the family tie should of course
be seen in light of the extremes of 1968 atmosphere which pervaded the 1970s in
so many places, and to which the Swedish minority Government of 1978 had fallen
prey, with a following in finlandized Finland where Marxism was an accepted
philosophy in the hope of getting Soviet approval. In that atmosphere, the
family unit was seen as an agent of conservatism, standing in the way of
society´s quick transformation into true Socialism, and consequently something
to undermined and sabotaged by people of the correct mind.
Whether Sweden “benefited” from the reform as you put it, is very much
in doubt as I see it. Certainly, it has undermined the family tie with a lot of
mischief following. It has turned little children into informers upon their
parents, and the social bureaucracy into a super-nanny with a kind of police
powers as against the parents. The change in atmosphere may be applauded by
leftist circles around, but it is certainly deplored by the families hit by the
revolutionary zeal. No figures have ever been given showing any beneficial
effect of the legislation. It may be an eye-opener to realize that the
situations depicted in the enclosed cartoons represent criminal offences
under the present Swedish legislation. The cartoonists do not seem to realize
this, nor those do it who propagate for copying the Swedish legislation,
Sincerely yours
Jacob W.F. Sundberg
Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus
Internet-anvisningar
Institutet för offentlig och internationell rätt
Finns på: http://www.oior.se
Prof. em Jacob W.F. Sundberg nås via e-mail på
sundberg@ioir.se
Letter to Kathryn Rich from Jacob
W.F. Sundberg