Scandinavian Nations Creating Commissions to Review Crimes Against Indigenous People

The governments of Sweden and Finland are setting up truth commissions to examine the countries’ past treatment of and abuses against the region’s Sami minority.

The Swedish government said on Wednesday its commission would be tasked with charting and investigating the policies affecting the Sami and their implementation.

“It feels very good that we can finally appoint a truth commission,” Sweden’s culture and Democracy Minister, Amanda Lind, said in a statement.

The minister also said that increasing awareness of “historical injustices” was important to “facilitate reconciliation”.

Last week, a similar initiative was launched in neighbouring Finland, when the government officially appointed a truth and reconciliation commission to “collect Sami people’s experiences of the actions of the Finnish state”.

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The Sami are believed to have arrived in the region at the end of the last ice age.

Victims of a brutal assimilation policy in the past, today they have been recognised as an indigenous people and have their own parliament in Sweden {snip}

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