Safe City Tour: No to Hate in Kristiansand

On the first day of our virtual visit to Kristiansand, Hanne Kro Sørborg, Gender Equality, Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator, welcomed us to the city. She started off the week by telling us about how they work on the issues of equality, inclusion and diversity.

 

– The «A City for All» week is held in week 6 every year. This week marks the importance of equality, inclusion and diversity. Kristiansand should be a place where it is good to live for everyone, explains Hanne.

– During the week, we want, with the help of large and small events, to show the diversity that exists in the entire Kristiansand municipality. All people, regardless of background, should feel valued and welcome with us! The «A City for All» week was arranged for the first time in 2018. This is to better highlight the municipality’s common strategy for equality, inclusion and diversity for 2015–2022: It’s all about people!

 

– This strategy is the foundation for our work to ensure that Kristiansand is a safe and resilient city. It is important to highlight that this week is a presentation of ideas that the municipality should focus on throughout the year to ensure that the stated goals in the strategy are met. What these goals are, can be summed up in this quote:

“Equality, inclusion and diversity is a condition for our city to be a good city to live in for everyone. All citizens, regardless of gender, ethnic or religious background, functional ability, or sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity, should have the same opportunities to participate in society.  They should also have the same access to and quality of services from the municipality regardless of background.”

– This Strategy document will provide a common direction for how the municipality throughout its work can contribute to people with different backgrounds, resources and needs having equal opportunities. The Strategy will be a tool for making Kristiansand a leading municipality when it comes to equality, inclusion and diversity.

-The Strategy was approved unanimously by the City Council on 25 March 2015.

-To ensure that the municipality and its leaders stay focused on the topic, we established a resource group for gender equality and diversity that will coordinate, inspire, promote ideas and initiatives and provide leadership support in the field of gender equality. The resource group is interdisciplinary and has cutting-edge expertise in gender equality, inclusion and diversity, concludes Hanne.

Kristiansand has been thinking this way for some years. Below is a vintage video from 2014 about “En by for alle / A City for Everyone”

 

 

Kristiansand stands together for a safer everyday life and to prevent hate. Crime prevention coordinator Johanne Benitez Nielsen, explains the background and focus for the new action plan against hate speech and hate crime in Kristiansand.

– Hate speech and hate crime have received increased attention during recent years, and it is widely agreed that this constitutes a serious societal problem with significant harmful consequences. Hate and prejudice expressed through criminal acts or speech affect individual persons and threaten democracy. This does not only affect whoever is directly exposed; it also affects whole groups that identify with the person exposed. Hate speech – both legal and illegal – sustains prejudice, creates fear, and weakens democracy by limiting various groups’ participation in public life, explains Johanne.

 

 

– Hate speech and hate crime are two overlapping phenomena merged into one focus area. Some hate speech is punishable and referred to as hate crime. To combat damage caused by both legal and illegal hate speech, both forms of speech are included in the plan for Kristiansand.

– The plan has the general population as its target group but aims specifically at exposed groups protected by the Anti-Discrimination Act. No distinction has been drawn between the various grounds of discrimination, as a more general approach to prevention efforts is prioritized. Hateful speech and acts against participants in public debate and persons in political positions are also included in the plan.

The politicians in Kristiansand decided on the following goal:
“Kristiansand is a safe, inclusive city where no one is exposed to hate speech or hate crime”.

Read more

 

– The local politicians also wanted to show their intent to work hard to counter hate speech. They therefore unanimously approved a declaration of intent against hatespeech.

Declaration of intent

 

 

To further address why hate speech is harmful and how to tackle it, Kristiansand Municipality arranged a breakfast seminar on the themes “freedom of expression and the responsibility of expression». This was done in June of 2021 in collaboration with ARKIVET Peace and Human Rights Center, University of Agder, Platform and Stiftelsen Fædrelandsvennen.

The main Idea was to promote the new Supplementary crime prevention plan 2016–2020 titled “Together for a safer everyday life”, with the new chapter 8, titled “Hate Speech and Hate Crime”

The freedom of expression prize “Courage to speak out” was also presented and the hope is that it will encourage active participation in the public discourse in Sørlandet. Kristiansand is looking for candidates who are good role models and who stimulate more people to sign up in the public debate in a positive way.

The last main event was composed of several debates where the themes were connected freedom of expression and the responsibility of expression were discussed.

The whole seminar was streamed and can be found below (in Norwegian).

 

 

“It is important to stand together against hate crime to maintain the fundamentals of our democracy, and to work together towards a better future”, adds Maja Fleck-Baustian.

The young people of Kristiansand are important actors in the work against hate speech and hate crime. Listen to them below tell you why hate is harmful, and why it is important to prevent it to create a ‘A City for All’

 

 

The Kristiansand city council has adopted a political statement against hate speech. They encourage as many social institutions and individuals as possible to support the declaration.

Read more

 

You can also sign the declaration.

Sign here

 

As part of the focus on hate crime and hate speech, Kristiansand is also addressing artistic freedom of expression.

What happens with a society where artists no longer dare to express themselves in fear of being publicly harassed and ridiculed? According to a recent report published by Stiftelsen Fritt Ord the number of artists who are reluctant to express themselves has increased in the last five years.

 

 

The Fritt Ord Foundation report gives examples that there also are attempts in Norway to restrict artistic freedom of expression, both politically and legally. But how is the situation in our city? In what way is freedom of expression and artistic freedom under pressure in Kristiansand.
These were the questions Torbjørn Urfjell, Director of Culture and Citizen Dialogue, asked at a webinar on freedom of expression and artistic freedom in Kristiansand in June 2021.

The webinar was part of a series of four that the Director of Culture and Citizen Dialogue will host this year and will lead up to a new cultural strategy in Kristiansand.

 

Kristiansand wrapped up their Safe City Tour with a conversation between four local practitioners.

 

 

 

They explain, “We have tried throughout the week to give you a little peak in to how we to try to meet the challenges that extremism and hatred present. Unfortunately, it looks like the risks are growing due to challenges in other sectors of society as well. Issues like poverty and the political environment, among other risk factors, are contributing to creating a situation that gives fuel to hatred and extremism.”

“We try to be very clear eyed on the challenges ahead and we would not be truthful if we didn’t admit that the recent developments, both locally and internationally, worry us.”

“We thought we would try to end our Safe City tour with a little talk on what we perceive to be the two most important parts of our work against extremism and hatred. In this conversation, we speak about how we organise the work in this field and make sure that people involved in this know each other and have a low bar for contacting one another.”

– We wish you all a great summer from all of us in Kristiansand!