What’s behind the front-page attack on SWEDHR by Sweden’s leading newspaper?
By Professor emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman, Professor emeritus Anders Romelsjö, vice-chairman, and Dr Lena Öske, in representation of the Board of Directors, Swedish Professors & Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR).
During the telephone interview with DN –solicited by DN just some hours before the two-page reportage was published– Prof Ferrada de Noli reminded of a definition of “Fake news” that he has published in The Indicter and on Twitter. He said to the DN journalist Mikael Delin (needles to say, not cited in the article):
“Fake news is not only when journalists twist an information, or when they invent an information. Fake news is also when central information is omitted”.
Disclaimer by the SWEDHR chairman
For my part, these are first issues that need to be clarified in rebutting DN biased report on SWEDHR:
A) As a free human been in control of my own thoughts, my own will and my own knowledge, I give myself the right to decide what opinion I shall express, on whatever issue I wish, and to whoever I decide. I also would believe that, as Swedish citizen, I am protected by the Freedom of Speech legislation.
B) The last thing it would ever occur to me, before accepting to be interviewed by any international outlet or journalist –regardless if from Danmark, the Donbass republics, Germany, Italy, the Russian Federation, or the UK, etc.– is to ask permission to DN and similar representatives of the power elites, to governments, or to any other institution colluded with world corporate magnates in selling weapons to fundamentalist dictatorships, which end being used to decimate decent people of secular countries.
C) The outlets, Radio, or TV, or journalists which I have talked to from the Russian Federation and other countries, to the best of my knowledge, have not misinterpreted my statements when quoting me directly.
If DN would have another impression, then DN has to explicit which those passages would be. What seemingly is not clearly understood from the part pf DN in this article they wrote, the claims they have, is that is DN who have to present the evidence about what they claim. Not me, not us, not SWEDHR. We are not the ones who have to run and rush to explain to DN. It is DN that has to explain to the public what is the exact source, base (“belägg”) for the “judgments”, innuendos and offensive statements they put forward in their endeavor to discredit our organization. The persistent geopolitical Russophobia that DN has maintained in the recent years exudes their text, and it is that biased stance that shall be also considered in judging this unfounded attack against our novel human rights organization.
D) In a recent initiative by Professor emeritus Anders Romelsjö, he contacted DN asking for SWEDHR have the possibility to exercise in DN the right of rebuttal, as it is customary. The reply from the DN’s Managing Editor, Mr Caspar Opitz , read: “We have given a generous space to Ferrada de Noli to meet the criticism in the published article” [“vi gav Ferrada de Noli generöst med utrymme för att bemöta kritiken i artikeln som publicerades – därför säger vi nej till önskan om genmäle“]. What?
1) The journalist never informed that they were writing a critical article on SWEDHR, otherwise I would I have demanded the text with the specific “criticism” to be sent over, before me commenting it, in order to make my replies relevant to that particular criticism. In fact, even not knowing of what DN was really preparing, I asked the interviewing DN journalist, Mr Mikael Delin, to send to me the draft of the piece together with his transcriptions of my replies, “as DN or SvD has done before on articles in which I am interviewed”, I said. He refused. I now understand why.
2) About “generous space” given to my replies: Only a minor part of the comments and replies I said in the interview were printed in the DN article. The DN editors did chose, arbitrarily, what were the comments made in the interview that best fitted with their biased piece which was obviously written and ready long before DN interviewed me. Most remarkable, among the items that they left out from their publication, there are those comments which I expressly said to the journalist of being essential about our positions.
E) Facts put forward in a dedicated research by US Professor Theodore A. Postol (professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) grounded my doubt on whether the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun would have been aerial. as the White Helmets claim.
F) Furthermore, as professor emeritus with years of research in the field of injury epidemiology, I have raised my doubts towards the veracity of specific reports by the ‘White Helmets’ that earliest told of gas sarin as the chemical agent, while at the same time reporting a much larger number of injured victims in comparison to a notable ‘low’ number of fatalities. The expected ratio injured/fatalities in cases of attacks with chemical agents of high toxicity goes in the opposite direction, where few injured survive amid lager fatality scores. I provided these explanations to the interviewing DN journalist, who instead printed in the article, “In the interviews (With Russian TV and Radio) he often makes statements on issues far away from his own area in the medical sciences” – That writes the journalist without indicating what specifically those health-related issues would have been. In the same context, DN chooses not to inform the readers that I am professor emeritus in the area of epidemiology. Which they well know, because DN has interviewed me in that professional capacity in various occasions in the past.
G) Why it is possible, or believable, that the “rebels” could be behind this (and other) chemical attacks? a) Because it is documented that they have perpetrated such attacks in the past. b) Because it is reported that they have access to the material. c) Because in geopolitics there exists also a logic, meaning that the assumption that Assad would feel compelled to commit political suicide it is completely absurd. The Syrian government is winning the war. Just in the days prior the alleged attack, the Trump administration have said that they were revising negative stances of the earlier administration about Assad, etc. The Syrian government would have only to lose with such horrifying attacks. Why would President Assad actively work towards further ostracism from the Western governments? For the White Helmets and the “rebels”, on the other hand, the propaganda exploitation of such horrifying deeds it has served for, on and on, each time a gas attack is claimed, to reiterate their request for a No-Fly Zone in Syria. The same goes for Dagens Nyheter. / Marcello Ferrada de Noli, professor emeritus, medicine doktor.
I
The DN spin
Amidst Sweden’s compact oligopoly stream media, with a clear warmongering agenda, just how widely known could a small organization of professors and doctors fighting for world peace become? An organization whose age it is said by DN of being less than two years? (In true, it was founded in 2014). And with no sponsoring or governmental funding as ALL the rest of similar organizations in Sweden? With all media exactly in the opposite ideological side?
The answer is, “Thanks, quite widely known in Sweden, indeed”. Thanks to this front-page article about us in DN [front-page image above, online edition April 20, 2017], the cable by Swedish news agency TT, and the publications of the same day in Aftonbladet, Expressen, Göteborg Posten, VK, Metro, etc, etc.
Paradoxically, it was never our goal to become this much known in Sweden. We aimed from the beginning [See SWEDHR Foundation Manifest] to solely intervene in the international debate of human rights and health, and to work for diminishing the current risks of a world conflagration. We believe we are on our way to achieve that goal, when we could document that during 2016, our online magazine The Indicter did receive more than a quarter of million readers. In addition, in less than six months, The Indicter Channel has got over 360,000 subscribers.
Dagens Nyheter (DN), Sweden’s leading newspaper, dedicated on 22 April 2017 a two-page article (front-page in the online edition) to our organization Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR). Despite that the aim of the piece appears clearly non-informative (e.g. no reporting or discussion on the content of our findings and conclusions; omitting to publish central issues discussed in the interview that uniquely characterizes this organization, etc.) but to discredit our organization, they did us some favours. The article has certainly contributed to spread in Sweden whereabouts of this young (about two years only) organization that otherwise –because the nature of our endeavours– has been instead mainly mentioned in the international news forum. The DN publication also brought new doctors to the organization. The reproduction of the replies we gave in the interview with DN are also correctly reproduced in the article. However, only a minor part of our statements in the interview appeared in the publication. This, added an arbitrary contextual information about our organization and other important free interpretations by the authors of the article, which do not correspond to facts, obliges us to to respond. Diverse contacts done by Professor emeritus Anders Romelsjö and Dr Leif Elinder with DN editors or the article authors to obtain the publication of a rebuttal, have not succeeded.
III
Important items that we will taking up in this and upcoming rebuttals to untruthful statements concerning SWEDHR done by DN and Swedish mainstream media
1. The report by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights mentioned both in the UN Security Council –and more recently around the OPCW meeting treating an alleged gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun– in fact refers to a purported gas attack which would have occurred in Sarmine, Syria, on March 2015. This is NOT explained in the DN article and thus it leads to an equivocal impression, and confusion regarding our organization’s statements. The cited SWEDHR report series [See here and here] consists in the analysis we did of two videos published by the ‘White Helmets’ as ‘proof’ that a gas attack had been perpetrated in Sarmine. Our conclusion was that the ‘life-saving’ procedures showed in the videos were, when not fake, anti-medical and even counter-productive for life-saving purposes. Those ‘propaganda’ videos had been presented in April 2015 at a meeting of the Security Council called by then US Ambassador Samantha Power, and where doctors from the Syrian opposition were given the opportunity to ask anew for a No-Fly Zone in Syria. The videos were then uncritically showed by CNN on April 16, and the request for a No-Fly Zone repeated. Dagens Nyheter has also demanded the establishment of such No-Fly Zone in Syria.
2. Dagens Nyheter writes in the subheading of its article, referring to SWEDHR: “A group of Swedish doctors affirm that information materials about chemical gas attacker [Observe plural form] in Syria are a bluff”. DN later explained that they based this claim in the formulation “staged chemical gas attack” [Observe singular form], which appears amid the heading of an article authored by Marcello Ferrada de Noli in The Indicter, April 6, 2017 [“Swedish Doctors for Human Rights: White Helmets Video, Macabre Manipulation of Dead Children and Staged Chemical Weapons Attack to Justify a “No-Fly Zone” in Syria“. The formulation refers to the staged evidence –the only documented “evidence” around the above-mentioned alleged gas in Sarmine– in the form of a movie showing among other anomalies, “simulated emergency resuscitation techniques being used on already lifeless children”. This according to “an examination of a White Helmets video, conducted by Swedish medical doctors, specialists in various fields, including paediatrics”.
Neither have SWEDHR representatives ever affirmed that chemical gas attacks [Observe plural form] have never occurred in Syria, nor that all the information materials [Observe plural form] are bluff.
3. But the DN article most important text, meaning the leading text of the article after the subheading (the “lead paragraphs”), refers to a different event, to another alleged gas attack, that was reported to have occurred in Khan Sheikhoun. Such unexplained juxtaposition of news mixed in the headline, bylines, leading paras and body of the article referred in fact to different events, and different years. This, we think, constitutes a most typical example of ‘fake news’.
The reply above was among the very many, in fact, most of the SWEDHR declarations during the interview, which were not published in the ‘investigative report’ by DN.
So, why has DN ‘mixed up’ in one same context different declarations we have done about different events? What we said about “fake life-saving procedures” around an alleged incident of March 2015 in Syria reported by the White Helmets, is definitive not the same of what we said about videos showing the alleged incident of April 4 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria.
3. The newspaper makes a great deal of concern about Swedish Doctors for Human Rights has been interviewed by Russian outlets. Swedish legislation about freedom of expression makes both absurd and illicit such ‘complaining’ about us given interviews and reporting our opinions or investigations-results (which by the way have nothing to do with Sweden) to TV channels or newspapers of any countries. These interviews were recently given by the SWEDHR chairman to journalists from UK, Denmark, Italy, Russia and the UK.
[In the caption of the horrifying image at left, DN writes: “In the ongoing propaganda war on who is behind the dead of 87 people in Idlib province in the beginning of April, a group of Swedish doctors participate in the Russian-Syrian side”. This is an definitive smear statement, equeally shameful as the refusal from the part of DN to publish a rebuttal by SWEDHR on this and other disinformation that DN spread]
5. Past occurrence of gas attacks in Syria from the part of ‘rebels’ is documented. With regard to the alleged gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, to the best of our knowledge it has not been probed that the perpetrator would have been the Syrian government. Neither have been confirmed by verifiable evidence the reports from the “White Helmets” and associated institutions about a purported aerial character of the alleged attack in Khan Sheikhoun.
6. When Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli was asked his opinion about a video of an interview with a ‘White Helmets’ personnel, his replies were definitive within the domain of injury epidemiology, which has been his special area of research as professor of public-health epidemiology (“Professor i folkhälsovetenskap inriktning epidemiologi“) and International Health. The main bulk of his observations about the video was the fact that the fatalities/injured ratio reported by the White Helmets in the movie, not only did not match ratio intervals described for cases of high-lethal chemical agents (high fatality scores vs. very low number of survivors), but also appeared to be the very reverse of those known estimations. This information was given to the Dagens Nyheter journalist, Mr Mikael Dalin, during the interview of April 21, 2107. However, the newspaper concealed this information. Furthermore, the news agency TT only refers “doktor i psykiatri’.
7. When Associated Professor Hans Blix (International Law) gave his assessment (2003) on the nonexistence of weapons of mass destruction, which the US attributed to Iraq, Dagens Nyheter never claimed that Hans Blix made that opinion to be in line with the Russian government. And definitely, Hans Blix was was never called over the phone by a DN journalist asking him if Russia was paying him, or what kind of contacts he has with the Russian government, or how much money he received from the Russians for each interview! In that case he would have replied exactly the same as Professor Ferrada de Noli did, “none whatsoever”.
8. Reports that would wrongly ascribe SWEDHR statements of an absolute denial of the existence of gas attacks in Syria” (note the plural substantive) are untruthful. In qualified contexts, provided this ‘fake news’ information would be intended to discredit our organization or its representatives, could be then regarded as defamation.
9. “Questioning” is not the same as “denying”. There is a categorical difference between questioning the reliability of a source, or the veracity of suspected amateurish-staged scenes presented as evidence, and affirming that SWEDHR has denied the existence of gas attacks in Syria or that it has helped the denial of gas-attacks occurrences in Syria [DN: “Gasattacker förnekas med hjälp från svensk läkargrupp“].
10. The conclusion formulated by the SWEDHR chairman at the end of the interview (the audio is embedded in the Sputnik article whose facsimile DN shows in the paper edition), clearly states that the allegations of a gas attack should be further examined by experts. Note that the audio’s title only refers that we are specifically questioning the “evidence” represented by scenes in a video uploaded by the White Helmets.
11. Did DN care to perform necessary verification between a) the wording used by us in the interviews and replies we have done, and b) the explaining expressions and comments printed, translated, or broadcasted by the networks (there are several, not only “from Russia”, e.g. UK, Germany, Denmark) referred to our stances? These networks have the absolute right to comment our statements done in the interviews, and we have no reason for assuming that we have been misquoted or misrepresented by those outlets. Yet, if DN and TT would be really and fairly wishing to quote direct from us, they should themselves have asked for an interview on our investigation-conclusions.
12. Why does the Swedish News agency TT further spin the DN article against SWEDHR (republished in most if the Swedish established newspapers) through mixing-up texts from the DN article, and thus giving an erroneous impression –totally unfounded– about the aims of the investigative activities we do at SWEDHR?
IV
Denouncing warmongers is a contribution to world peace
Nevertheless we intentionally do NOT have a focus on the domestic human rights endevours in Sweden, SWEDHR statements denouncing war crimes have been published and/or commented in the journal of Swedish Doctors Association (“Läkartidningen”) and the medical news quotidian “Dagens Medicine”. The Swedish branch of “Doctors Without Borders” has even sent a gratitude message to SWEDHR for our denouncing of the bombardment of one of their hospitals done by coalition forces. And even Dagens Nyheter (DN) has eventually published opinion pieces signed by Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, and where we have stated our opposition to further Sweden’s approach to NATO. In a fortuitous encounter of SWEDHR chairman with the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the minister courteously complimented our human rights endeavours, as we did about those of her own, back in 2015.
But in recent issues of The Indicter, SWEDHR was obliged to denounce a variety of late human rights infringements by the Swedish government referred to international human-rights issues. We have also criticized the support by Sweden’s most influential media, the self-called “independent liberal” paper Dagens Nyheter (DN) for a No-Fly Zone in Syria –a measure deemed by U.S. generals as leading inevitably to a war between the US and the Russian Federation [See our video “Swedish elites’ DN endorse H. Clinton No Fly Zone: It would mean War with Russia and Syria“].
Recently, we also presented evidence, based on clinical assessments by SWEDHR doctors [here, and here], which demonstrated that a material propagated by the ‘White Helmets’ –supported by important Swedish agencies– were in fact fake ‘life-saving’ procedures or straight anti-medical. The importance of this revelation was deemed principal by international and social media outside Sweden, particularly in the US and UK, since our investigation referred to video materials presented in April 2015 at a United Nations Security Council ad-hoc meeting called by the then US ambassador Samantha Powers to back the request from the White Helmets for the establishment of a NO-Fly Zone in Syria. Eventually, SWEDHR’s own investigative report was presented as evidence in the United Nations Security Council session of April 12, 2017.
Ensuing our denounces, Swedish users requested to Wikipedia to delete the article “Swedish Doctors for Human Rights”. Wikipedia administrators decided to keep the article. However, simultaneously with the unjustified attack against our organization published now April 20 by DN, the same Swedish users destroyed the Wikipedia article with the use of massive text decimation and the introduction of deceitful, and even racist-wise edits.
V
What are the real reasons of this remarkable political attack by DN and the Swedish media, against an organization they claim it is “almost unknown”?
There are reasons in the background, and immediate causes. This is in the context: SWEDHR and The Indicter Magazine are the only geopolitical and human-rights publications in Sweden that exercise a critical analysis of both the authorities and the media (institutions that are highly correlated in Sweden ). Established human rights organizations in Sweden – all partly or totally financed by the government or public funds– do not care for this questioning. We have successively published the result of our analyses and research in The Indicter Magazine and also in “SWEDHR Research and Reports”.
The leading text in SWEDHR’s online magazine, The Indicter, might also explain the reaction of a group of Swedish Wikipedia-users which have already declared their agenda of deleting both Wikipedia articles “Swedish Doctors for Human Rights” and regarding an article about his founder, “Marcello Ferrada de Noli”.
Please note also that SWEDHR has from the beginning declared that the organization was going to deal with geopolitical issues associated with the human rights and health in an international frame. SWEDHR has never had the aim to principally work in the domestic Swedish arena. From this premise, the ‘criticism’ against SWEDHR for being more known internationally rather than in Swedish media, in fact appears as non relevant and even logically absurd. Documented examples of SWEDHR presence in the international decision-making process are found in the references done by the very article in Dagens Nyheter (DN) aimed to vilify our organization on absolutely false grounds. DN recalls a SWEDHR report mentioned in the United Nations Security Council session of April 12, 2017. Another is, according to DN, the citing of the SWEDHR report in the discussions between the superpowers around proceedings at the OPCW, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [Both information sourced in the DN article of April 20, 2017].
This is the leading text in the presentation found at “The Indicter’s Editorial Board“:
"The Indicter Magazine –an initiative of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights– has most of its audience located in the US and other English-speaking countries. The Indicter Magazine has established itself as a rare window through which the secrets of Sweden’s elites can be seen from abroad, as shown by the annual report of January 2017 showing our nearly 300,000 site visitors and our compilation of articles. Our aim is to analyse human right issues with international impact. We also examine and share geopolitical-relevant news about Sweden that otherwise would remain known only by a self-affirming Swedish governing class and commentariat (which we have termed a “Duck Pond” of complacency). Conversely, we give interested Swedes an insight on the international opinions about Sweden, which the state-owned and mainstream media restrict. The few media sites that publish in English from Sweden are heavily financed by the Swedish state and are devoted to a pro-NATO agenda of biased news despite Sweden’s ostensibly neutral status."
In concrete, SWEDHR has criticized in The Indicter, in a variety of investigative articles and statements, a number of issues in which Sweden has appeared in franc neglecting of human rights, internationally. Some examples: a) The illicit arms exports done by Sweden to countries maintaining belligerent actions against civil populations (such as the case of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, in which also participate UAE, recipients of arms exports from Sweden), all which constitutes a human rights concern. b) The utilization of bribes for the obtaining of a seat in the United Nations Security Council. c) The refusal of Swedish authorities to abide with the UN (UNGWAD-panel) decision on Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention and respect for his political asylum – also a theme of civil and human rights. d) A criticism to former Swedish authorities for, in the analysis of SWEDHR, would have indulged in warmongering activities and support of the repression of civil minorities in the disputed area of Donbass, Ukraine. e) A criticism to the warmongering Swedish political establishment and media that supported the initiative of establishing a No-Fly Zone in Syria, in spite that the very top of US armed forces generals have declared that a NO-Fly Zone in Syria would immediately signify war with Russia.
A sample of analyses here below:
[Click on he links]
What’s behind the terrorist attack in Sweden?
How Sweden will help bombing Yemen exporting weapons to UAE
Iraq war: ‘Neutral Sweden’s participation in US bombing of Baghdad civilian shelters
Sweden’s unethical – and unlawful – arms deals with ISIS-backing Saudis
VI
Stigmatized by DN’s geopolitical Russophobia
This section deals with academic characterizations done in the DN article on Professor emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli.
The origin of the criticism against SWEDHR by these representatives of the Swedish elites could be resumed in one word: Geopolitical Russphobia.
What is unforgivable for these Swedish elites is not so much that I criticized their wrongdoings. For, really, they could not expect a different intellectual behavior for my part.
(For instance, the DN journalist doing the interview, mentioned –I did not understand if in critical terms or just stating his hypotheses– that there “seems to be” a line of political or ideological conduct between my past societal engagements and the denunciations we are doing now in SWEDHR. So, this with SWEDHR must be also a political engagement for me? Perhaps he was expecting me to deny my past, or negate my present, and to say, “no, no, this is different”, “this is more neutral”, “more mature”, etc. Instead I said, “of course, it is the same line, the same thread, and you can search even before in my life if you wish. For you will find the same”. If not in these exact words, I referred to this identical in content: La lotta continua. Then he changed the subject.)
The problem is that I am, or so I was regarded until today in Sweden, a Swedish professor. And a Swedish professor has never, ever, been interviewed by six different Russian channels while publishing one op article in a legendary “Soviet” paper like Izvestia, and all in about the same week.
Therefore, one could believe, it was a remarkable emphasis in the interview on reiterative questions like whether “Russia” is paying me or SWEDHR, if “Russia TV” paid me for the interviews, or for the expenses. if I had any relation with the Russian authorities, etc, etc. There were questions as coming directly from the Swedish Security Police. All my answers were “no, of course not”. It did not matter much.
Now assessing the spirit of the DN article, it is just to conclude that, obviously, the truth helps not against DN’s idiosyncratic prejudice.
I was brand-market for being interviewed by “Russians”. And while another colleague interviewed was properly referred in the article as to “Associate Professor Åke Sellström” [“Docent Åke Sellström“] , I was demoted immediately from my legal professor-title, or my professor emeritus title once bestowed upon me with diploma and medal and all. Now I was in the DN article with my name only. Not too bad. And the Wikipedia article on “Swedish Doctors for Human Rights” was immediately changed by Swedish users. Now, not any longer it says that “SWEDHR was founded by Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli”. It has been changed to, “SWEDHR was founded by [only] a “Chilean Swedish” of name bla bla. [we come back to the Wikipedia episodes down below in his text].
Is that not, cultural racist?
No, we think it is geopolitical”Russophobia”. And only partly. Is is also a standard journalistic trick. otherwise popular in low-ethic minded tabloids elsewhere, consisting in personally discredit or diminish the relevance of the messenger himself in order to invalid the message.
And it is more than that, Far more. It is about the ‘NATO versus Neutral Sweden’ dispute. DN’s geopolitical alignment is known. In our opinion, such alignment does not correspond to the interest of Sweden, to the national-security interests of Sweden to be more precise. SWEDHR’s stance on the issue is also known. We are for the increase of Sweden’s neutrality stances and to preserve non-alignment. The position of some SWEDHR members of the board has even made public by DN itself, in debate-rebuttal articles published in DN and carrying SWEDHR signature [Read the articles here, and here].
it is also a form of libellous Russophobia, if I may add. Because on and on the DN article hints –utterly mistaken– on that our positions at SWEDHR are identical to the positions that the Russian government maintains. It is an utterly wrong assumption by DN and all the media that have repeated the same geopolitical libel. In the first place, because the authorities in Russia or Syria are referring to political analyses, and proposing political solutions. In our case, we are mainly referring to epidemiological and clinical analyses of material depicting an alleged scenario (purported resulted from an alleged chemical attack) and often from a geopolitical perspective, and we abstain of proposing any definitive political solution
To demand that the events should be investigated objectively, and that all evidence should be put at the disposal of any second qualified opinion, that is not a political position; that is to have a scientific-research minded stance.
This is the reply I sent in my written correction – which was not printed exactly in this way:
The questions you raise coincide with the the Russian government’s line [“Frågorna som ni driver överensstämmer med den ryska regeringens linje…”]
– No, now I interrupt you. We have a line of our own, we engage for peace. Whether our findings coincide or not with a variety of governments, that is not our intention. It’s the same situation when Hans Blix made statements about that “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction” did not exist.
[“Nej, nu avbryter jag dig. Vi har vår egen linje, vi agerar för fred. Huruvida våra fynd överensstämmer eller ej med olika regeringar är det inte vår avsikt. Samma sak när Hans Blix uttalade sig om att ”Saddams massförstörelsevapen” inte funnits”].
In the published dialogue published by DN , it stands instead:
The issues you raise coincide with the the Russian government’s line [“Frågorna som ni driver överensstämmer med den ryska regeringens linje…”]
“–No, now I interrupt you. We only have our own line. Whether that coincide or not with the positions of different countries, that is not our intention.”
[“Nej, nu avbryter jag dig. Vi driver bara vår egen linje. Om den överensstämmer med olika länders positioner så är det inte vår avsikt”].
VII
The criticism of DN and other media against SWEDHR does not address our results, the content of our investigations
The DN criticism makes no reference at all on what our findings were. The text contains, principally, distilled references ad hominem, and innuendos or suggestive phrasing trying to discredit us as persons, and by assaying that, trying to discredit our organization.
The journalist that called me to do the interview, without any previous warning, refused my proposition of sending me the questions per email. So it was totally unexpected and also recorded directly by the journalist. It did not matter much to me, really.
The interviewing journalist, Mikael Delin, did not print all what I said, neither all his questions. Nevertheless, he was fair in reproducing correctly the segments of the interview that were finally published, with the only exception of the text quoted above –and which I sent to him corrected via email.
CONTINUES…
[This article remains so far in draft-in-progress form, it has not yet been proofread, and therefore it should not be considered as final version until 27 April 2017. Updates doing continuously]