Stockholm: Protest against pre-school closure

Many angry and concerned parents came to the Bismilahi Rinkeby pre-school on Saturday afternoon to protest its closure. Among the 300-400 people who showed up, several got up to speak. One of the mothers said that until now she felt she was worth just as much as all other Swedish parents, but now it doesn't feel like it any more.

Protest in Stockholm

On January 18 the manager of the Bismilahi day care chain, which includes seven schools, was arrested on suspicion of serious tax and bookkeeping offences, in connection to a terrorism financing case. She is suspected of transferring 10-12 million kroner in 2005-2008 out of the country without paying tax on it, apparently to Dubai, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

The Somali Muslims pre-schools have 194 kids in Tensta and Rinkeby (Stockholm), with 79 more on a waiting list. All together they employ 65 people.

Suzanne Holtzberg ­Anderlid, the school coordinator, says that the school had managed to get the trust of the Somali groups. The parents were secure leaving the kids there. They worked hard with bilinguals and helped them in the social structure. But now that the schools have been closed again they have taken away the parents right to choose who will take care of their children. She says they'll never accept that.

The municipality says it's ready to place all 194 children in other pre-schools, but the proposal wasn't very popular by the parents at Saturday's meeting. One of the mothers said she can't see herself sending her kids to a different pre-school, and was met with applause.

Source: SvD (Swedish) [though they mixed up the name of the school in the article]

See also: Sweden: Arrests in terror financing probe