The Swedish government has called a crisis meeting due to a discrimination case of a Roma woman at Stockholm’s Sheraton Hotel, reports Helsingin Sanomat. The woman, who was invited by the government to speak at a seminar on discrimination of the Roma in Sweden’s capital, was escorted with her traditional dress out of the hotel’s breakfast room.
The government published at the seminar a white paper on the abuses and rights violations of the Roma in the last century.
The incident has received wide media coverage in Sweden.
The woman, Diana Nyman, is a native Finn who lives in Sweden.
“I felt so disgraced,” she was quoted as saying to Swedish news agency TT. “It was so embarrassing at the breakfast room where there were a lot of people who didn’t understand why I was being discriminated.”
Nyman said that as she while she was escorted out of the room, people must have thought she wanted to eat breakfast without paying.
Read full story (in Finnish) here.
Sweden’s integration minister, Erik Ullenhag, said that Nyman’s case shows that discrimination happens daily in Sweden and that there is a need to debate the issue.
One positive matter about Sweden is that the government does take a stand against discrimination and shuns the xenophobic and far-right Sweden Democrats.
Finland could learn a lot from Sweden on how to combat intolerance and discrimination.