Even before the far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan set fire to a Koran near the Turkish embassy on Saturday, it was known that the application fee for the demonstration permit was paid by someone else: the journalist Chang Frick, owner of the news site Nyheter idag and presenter of the SD channel Riks.
Paludan claims that it was not his idea to travel to Sweden and burn the Koran, writes Today’s news. He believes that the proposal came from Frick or a reporter from the far-right site Exakt24.
Frick tells DN that he would not encourage anyone to burn a Koran – on the other hand, he wanted to encourage the right to mark against Turkey.
Today’s ETC has also reported that Frick should have paid for Paludan’s plane ticket to Sweden – something both Paludan and Frick deny.
Not involved
The burning of the Koran – an action that outraged both inside and outside Sweden – has put further obstacles in the wheels of Sweden’s NATO process. At the same time, it has sparked a debate about Swedish freedom of expression and the government has been partly criticized for not standing up for it enough.
A straight question: Rasmus Paludan’s Koran burning was not sanctioned by the Sweden Democrats?
– No, we are not involved in it at all, no, replies Henrik Vinge, SD’s group leader and deputy party leader.
“Dramatic development”
However, he wants to emphasize that Frick is also involved in an SVT program (the comedy program “Immigrants for Swedes”, editor’s note) – and therefore Vinge cannot say whether Frick “is more connected to SD than he is to SVT”.
– But I also think that Sweden is a country with freedom of speech, we are a country with freedom of demonstration, and there has been a dramatic development linked to this NATO application lately, says Vinge.
Chang Frick tells SVT Nyheter that he does not believe that by helping Rasmus Paludan he has sabotaged Sweden’s NATO application.
– If I, by paying 320 kroner in an administrative fee to the police, sabbatical the application, it was probably on very shaky ground from the beginning, he says.