Joakim Lamotte - Image: Facebook
Voice of Europe, “Swedish journalist who writes about migrant violence threatened with his life – Police refuse to help”, 7 Oct 2018:
In a video blog, the freelance journalist Joakim Lamotte, who is best known for his videos about different rape cases and the increased violence against women in Sweden, explains why recently he hasn’t been as active on Facebook as usual.
The reason is that he has been subjected to systematic threats with the purpose to silence him and stop his journalistic activities.
Lamotte says that people call him and tell him that he should be slaughtered, that his wife should be slaughtered, that they are going to f*ck his entire family etc. Only this past weekend, he received over 40 calls of that kind.
A few days ago, he also received a bomb threat. A person announced that explosives had been placed on the family’s two cars. Lamotte says that he has reported all threats to the police, including the bomb threat. A police patrol was sent out to search the family’s home and investigate whether any bombs were placed as claimed. However, nothing was found.
Recently, Lamotte announced that he would live steam on Facebook. As a result, he received new phone threats. In one of the calls, a person told him that if he broadcasts live and talks about the threats he has received, he will be killed and “blown to pieces”. However, Lamotte decided not to be silenced and went through with broadcast despite the death threat.
“They will not succeed in scaring me into silence,” he says in the broadcast. However, he doesn’t get any support from the police in that decision.
Lamotte holds up a stack of envelopes from the police. They all contain information that the investigations related to the threats have been closed.
In one case, the police sent him confirmation that they had received his complaint, and a notification that the case was closed on the same day. The timestamps on the two documents show that the case had been closed less than one hour after the complaint had been received.
Lamotte doubts that the police have investigated the threats at all, since they had not even received the sound files with recordings of the threats that Lamotte sent them when they decided to close the case.
And he questions the principle of equality before the law. He is convinced that if a mainstream media journalist or a politician had been threatened, then Säpo (the Swedish Security Service) would have taken over the case and used large resources to find the perpetrators. This in contrast to, as now, the cases being closed by return post.
Threats to freedom of speech are not taken seriously in Sweden today, Lamotte says. And that is one of the main reasons why he, despite the threats, decided to go through with the broadcast.
The police’s deprioritisation of these kind of threats frighten many into silence, he says. Few people dare to speak their mind after receiving death threats.
He then states that, in the absence of police assistance, he has taken his own actions to protect himself and his family. Among other things, he has installed surveillance cameras and motion detectors on his site, so nobody can get close to his house or cars without being detected.
At the end of his video message Lamotte speaks directly to the threateners and tells them; “If you ever harm my family you will wish the police find you before I do”.
He then speaks for another minute, but the sound is muted, probably by Säpo who doesn’t care to protect him but finds it important to monitor, control and silence him.
