Between 1934 and 1976, Sweden created a eugenics plan, based on the science of racial biology, with the aim of "getting rid of a certain type of people: the weakest".
Kjell Sundstedt's family never talked about the darkest moment in their past.
"It was a secret that no one dared to talk about. Society was ashamed that people were forced to be sterilized," the seventy-one-year-old director told Euronews.
He didn't even discuss this with his family, so he was shocked to discover that his four uncles had been forcibly sterilized.
"They were sterilized because they were poor. Their crime was poverty," he adds.
Sweden created a eugenics plan, based on the science of racial biology, between 1934 and 1976. The first country in Europe to later abolish forced sterilization, it implemented a policy whereby between 20,000 and 33,000 Swedes were forced to undergo sterilization .
The victims were young and mostly women, who were judged as "powerless", "rebellious" or "mixed". The Swedish authorities believed they were creating a society that would be the envy of the whole world.
"They wanted to get rid of a certain type of people: the weakest," says Sundstedt.
Although his mother managed to escape to the Swedish capital and avoid sterilization, her sister May-Britt was not so lucky.
Their mother died when Mai-Brit was very young. Because their family was poor, the city's child protective services stepped in and required her and her younger siblings who still lived at home to take an intelligence test.
"During this period they put a lot of faith in intelligence tests, it was very important to them," says Sundstedt. These tests mostly consisted of knowledge-based questions, and since May-Britt and her brothers were poor, they could not answer them because they did not attend school regularly.
May-Brit scored below the threshold of "normal intelligence" and was therefore classified as "feeble-minded". As a result, she was sent to Nanilund, a mental asylum.
“Ajo konsiderohej se kishte një sëmundje mendore sepse protestonte vazhdimisht”, kujton regjisori.
“Edhe pse shpesh bënin teste të IQ-së gjatë kohës që ajo ishte në objekt, ata nuk mund të thoshin se kishin gabuar”, shton ai.
Të gjithë ata që dilnin nga qendra duhej të sterilizoheshin, ky ishte rregulli, ndaj e transferuan në një institucion tjetër dhe e dërguan për operacion.
“Babai i saj nuk donte që ajo të sterilizohej, ai ishte kundër, por nuk ndihmoi”, thotë Sundstedt.
Në atë kohë, programi shtetëror i sterilizimit nuk ishte sekret. Ajo u krye në dritën e një debati publik. Kishte “propagandë të madhe dhe pak kritika” në sytë e shoqërisë suedeze, thotë Vidmalm.
"Herman Lundborg, director of the State Institute for Racial Biology, feared a kind of 'racial suicide' as people with bad genes reproduced more than the middle class," he says.
Following a parliamentary inquiry in the 1990s, the government offered compensation to victims of forced sterilization. They created a financial compensation plan of 175,000 Swedish kronor (about 15,000 euros) for each victim.
In total, 3,000 cases of compensation were awarded, a very small number compared to the number of people who were allegedly forcibly sterilized.
Source: Euronews
