Tell HN: Sweden has its first arrest against a man for "insult against official"

19 points by acadapter 340 days ago | 12 comments

On July 2, it became illegal to phrase insults against publicly employed staff such as police officers, teachers, medical personnel, etc.

A 60 year old man in Sweden was stopped and arrested for both a DUI and the insults he said in conjunction to the police stop. The penalty scale for "insult against official" can be fines or up to 5 months in prison depending on severity.

/r/sweden discussion with news link (in Swedish):

https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/1lqnxea/f%C3%B6rsta_gripande_f%C3%B6r_f%C3%B6rol%C3%A4mpning_mot_polisen/

marginalia_nu 340 days ago |

Seems like a bit of a nothingburger to be honest. Sweden has never had particularly strong freedom of speech (e.g. it was already illegal defamation to accuse someone of acts they are guilty of it hurts their reputation).

thorin 340 days ago |

I feel like every UK building and most private companies have a sign saying something like "we take insults and abuse very seriously and will prosecute etc etc". I always see this in hospitals, civic buildings etc so assumed it's already part of normal law in the UK. Is there a reason you find this particularly disturbing? Not sure what the penalty is.

carlosjobim 340 days ago | |

While real countries might have laws against insulting a public servant or laws against insulting any person, this particular Swedish law also explicitly criminalizes any speech or behaviour which "is intended to hurt the self esteem" of a public servant, as well as any "accusations against" a public servant.

kingkongjaffa 340 days ago | |

While this might be true, the police are the ones who decide if they will prosecute. There’s no such thing as pressing charges or deciding to drop charges as the victim of a crime in the UK. The police will investigate and decide, so the warnings written on the walls of buildings are not really worth anything.

You can however do things like refuse to give evidence to torpedo the court case if you wanted to functionally “drop the charges” but if there’s still a chargable offense in the eyes of the police and credible evidence otherwise then the court case can still proceed regardless of your feelings.

DharmaPolice 340 days ago | |

These signs (if phrased in this way) are slightly misleading. I doubt anyone is ever prosecuted for just being insulting. What happens is you'll be asked to leave if you're aggressively rude and if you refuse to leave then eventually the police might be called.

josephcsible 340 days ago | |

> Is there a reason you find this particularly disturbing?

It's contrary to the human right of freedom of speech. It's bad for all the same reasons that lèse-majesté laws are, but is even worse because its scope is so much broader.

billy99k 340 days ago |

It seems many of these countries that have gone further left introduce laws against free speech. See: the UK.

thorin 340 days ago | |

Being reported as maybe. But incitement and abuse has always been illegal and doesn't have much to do with freedom of speech. E.g. see Bob Vylan at glasto calling for death of people... is that really what we want? OK it's no where near as bad as actually killing people, but it's still not ideal!

DharmaPolice 340 days ago | | |

>Bob Vylan at glasto calling for death of people... is that really what we want?

Yes, I want people to be able to say "Death to the IDF" (or death to Hamas for that matter).

luke5441 340 days ago | |

Sweden now famously has a very right-wing party in its ruling coalition.

burnt-resistor 339 days ago | |

That's not it. This illiberalism under a far-right government.