Finland Sweden Russia The Koran burns Stockholm Copenhagen
Picture of far-right politician Rasmus Paludan. Credit: Wikipedia – By Tobias Hellsten / ToHell – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128027194
Russia is behind the Koran burnings carried out by far-right politician Rasmus Paludan in Stockholm and Copenhagen according to Finnish and Swedish media.
Media in Finland and Sweden are convinced that Russia is lagging behind the recent burning of the holy Muslim Koran in the Swedish capital Stockholm and Copenhagen in Denmark. These actions were carried out by the Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan.
According to reports from Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and also the Swedish TV channel SVTPaludan arranged the event in Stockholm with the help of a Swedish journalist Chang Johannes Frick.
Frick worked for the Russian state news channel Ruptly – a subsidiary of the Russian International channel Russia Today – and is considered an alleged asset of the GRU, Moscow’s military intelligence service.
His aim would have been to destabilize Sweden’s ongoing negotiations to join NATO, the news outlets claimed. Paludan said his actions were designed to motivate the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to freeze the negotiations for the Nordic country to join NATO.
On January 21, Paludan burned a copy of the Koran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm under the protection of the Swedish police, an act Erdogan described as “betrayal, vulgarity, villainy and disgrace”.
That is what the Finnish press claims Chang Johannes Frick was the one who suggested to Paludan that he should burn the Koran in front of everyone. They claimed that he would have guaranteed that any damage he might cause in front of the embassy would be repelled by several of his security teams.
In addition, Frick also turned out to be the one who paid for the plane ticket from Copenhagen to Stockholm. The ideologue for the date and place of this act would also have belonged to Frick, since it occurred only a few days before the planned visit to Sweden by the Turkish defense minister.
Yesterday, Friday the 27th, the leader of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party burned two more copies of the holy book, this time in the Danish capital Copenhagen. One was destroyed outside a mosque and another in front of the Turkish embassy. Paludan threatened to continue burning the books every Friday until Erdogan approves Sweden’s entry into the Alliance.
Pictures of the burning of the Koran in Sweden show Paludan is constantly surrounded by Swedish police and several people dressed in dark clothes, which prevented any kind of incident.
The image of Paludan with a flaming Koran in his hand has gone around the world and raised the public ire of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as other Muslim leaders. He then used a televised prime-time speech to announce the freezing of negotiations on Sweden’s entry into NATO.
“Those who have caused such disgrace in front of our embassy cannot expect any kindness from us in their application to join NATO,” Erdogan announced.
“The Swedish government does not need to talk about rights and freedoms. If you care so much about them, you must first show respect to the Republic of Turkey and the Muslim faith. If you do not show respect, you will not have any support from us on the issue of NATO,” the Turkish president continued.
In his speech, Erdogan reminded Sweden that if it wants to join NATO, it must first prevent any kind of political activity that threatens the Muslim faith and its holy books, as agreed at the NATO meeting in Madrid last June the year, which was reported by elespanol.com.
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