SUMMARY IN ENGLISH
CONTRA # 6 1996
Local governemnt efficiency - or inefficiency
What about efficiency in local government? Contra presents tables on all
but 16 of the local governments in Sweden. How do they manage their finances
and their services to the community? Tables show net financial assets
(if large, the citizens have been overtaxed) and net financial debt, as
well as key figures for efficiency in public shools, children day care
centers, costs for assistance to elderly people, costs for welfare (solely
a local government responsibility in Sweden) and the average tax rate.
The differences between local governments, even those with similar structures
as regards population and geography, are stunning.
On Harry Söderman - policeman and adventurer
An article on Harry Söderman, one of Sweden's leading criminal investigators
specialized in technical analysis. He was also a leading character in
the international police community and participated in the arming of a
Danish anti-communist resistance movement, created to be activated if
Denmark were occupied by Communist forces. Mr Söderman died 40 years
ago, in a way that could be expected by an international criminal investigator
- under "suspicious circumstances" in a bar in Tanger in Northern
Africa.
Deported to 45 years of Communist hell
Valentins Silamikelis succeeded in fleeing to Sweden from his native Latvia
in May 1945, during the very last days of World War II. He went to the
Baltic Island of Gotland with a military German vessel that succeeded
to get away ahead of the Soviet advance in Latvia. In Sweden he - and
his compatriots - was put into camp and in January 1946 no less than 153
Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians that had arrived as "military"
were sent back to Latvia, which now was occupied by the Soviet Union.
At least 4 of the returnees were executed and some forty were sentenced
to Gulag. One of these was Mr Silamikelis. Mr Silamikelis succeeded in
surviving Gulag and later became an architect in Latvia, although he has
all through his career been regarded as third class citizen, because of
his "Swedish" background. In 1991 Latvia regained its independence
and Mr Silamikelis was able to get his diaries and photographs back. These
were left to an unknown Swedish policeman the very morning when Mr Silamikelis
was deported and later forwarded to his relatives in America. Mr Silamikelis
himself had no idea of the whereabouts of this material until in 1991,
when he started to prepare a book, which now has been published by Contra.
The picture is from January 25 1946. Mr Silamikelis has tried to commit
suicide by using broken glass from the buses that were used to transport
the Baltic refugees to the Swedish port of Trelleborg (another man, Peteris
Vabulis, succeeded in committing suicide during the transport), and he
is carried away by Swedish policemen. After being taken cared of by Swedish
physicians he was carried aboard the freighter Beloostrov and was deported
together with 152 other Balts (and several hundred former German soldiers)
to the USSR, to spend 45 years in a Communist hell.
Jerzy Popieluszko - one of the heroes of the Cold War
The heroes of the Cold War. On the Polish catholic priest Jerzy Popieluszko.
New ways of working?
Sten Dybeck, former deputy chairman of New Democracy, a populist political
party having 25 seats in the Swedish parliament 1991-1994, discusses the
need for more flexible working hours in modern society. His basic idea
is the need of fewer working hours for mothers and people approaching
retirement. This could be combined with extended working hours for people
that wants to, why not have a system of four hour blocks, instead of a
fixed eight hour working day?
On opression in Communist China
On a new Amnesty International report on opression in Communist China.
Presidents on trial - from South Korea
A comment on the trials against two former presidents in South Korea.
