Anna Lindh

Anna Lindh (Stockholm, June 19, 1957-Solna, September 11, 2003) was a Swedish politician, member of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP). She served as Minister of the Environment between 1994 and 1998, and then was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1998 until her assassination.

With a law degree from Uppsala University, she entered politics after joining the Swedish Social Democratic Youth Organization (SSU), which she would come to chair between 1984 and 1990, and later held positions of responsibility in the Ingvar governments Carlsson and Göran Persson.

As Foreign Minister, she stood out for her defense of a common international policy among the members of the European Union, as well as for supporting the adoption of the euro as the official Swedish currency. On September 10, 2003, in full exercise of her charge, she was stabbed by an unknown person and died the next day as a result of her injuries.

The Union for the Mediterranean named after her the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures, dedicated to promoting intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean region.

Biography

Anna Lindh was born on June 19, 1957 in Enskede-Årsta, a southern suburb of Stockholm. When she was eight years old her family moved to Enköping, where she completed compulsory education.She later studied law at Uppsala University, graduating in 1982, and she was a notary at Stockholm University.

Interested in politics from a young age, largely influenced by the arrival of Olof Palme as Prime Minister of Sweden, she joined the Social Democratic Youth Organization (SSU) at the age of twelve and during her youth participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

Although at first she wanted to dedicate herself to journalism, and even got to work for the local newspaper Enköpings-Posten, she ended up leaving it to take up work within the Social Democratic Party (SAP). In the late 1970s she was elected councilor in the municipality of Enköping, his first public function.

She was married since 1991 to Bo Holmberg (1942-2010), Governor of Södermanland, and they had two children. In the last years of her life she lived in the city of Nyköping.

Political career

In the 1982 general elections he won a seat in the Riksdag for the Södermanland constituency, coinciding with Olof Palme's electoral victory. He held the seat until 1985.

From 1984 to 1990, Lindh served as chairman of the Social Democratic Youth Organization. Thanks to that position he was able to participate in numerous conferences on the environment and foreign affairs. After completing her term, she was promoted to the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party.

Before returning to national politics, Lindh was a Stockholm councilor for culture from 1991 to 1994, as well as director of the Stockholm City Theatre.

Minister of the Environment (1994-1998)

With the victory of the Social Democratic Party in the 1994 general elections, Anna Lindh was appointed Minister for the Environment under the government of Ingvar Carlsson. She held the post for the first two years of Göran Persson's government.

His four years in office were marked by a tightening of environmental legislation, in compliance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in 1994. Together with the Ministers of the Environment of Denmark and Spain, Svend Auken and Josep Borrell, promoted a modification of the European regulation on dangerous goods, strategic actions against acid rain, and greater collaboration between the European Union and the United States.

Minister of Foreign Affairs (1998-2003)

Shortly after Göran Persson's reappointment in the 1998 general election, Anna Lindh was appointed as Foreign Minister, replacing Lena Hjelm-Wallén. Throughout her mandate, she stood out for defending a common European foreign action, the enlargement of the European Union to 25 states, and a greater role for the United Nations Organization.

In the first half of 2001, while Sweden assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, Lindh was in charge of leading the continental foreign policy. Among other measures, she negotiated a solution to the Macedonian conflict of 2001 together with the high representative of Community Foreign Policy, Javier Solana, with whom she maintained a good professional relationship.

A controversial aspect of his tenure was the December 2001 repatriation of Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian activist who had emigrated to Sweden and was claiming political asylum. After foreign efforts, he was handed over to the United States secret service for his alleged membership in a terrorist organization, a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and later repatriated to Egypt. However, the deportation occurred without time to speak with a lawyer, which is why the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ruled in 2004 that it had been illegal. Agiza ended up returning to Sweden and was granted humanitarian asylum.

In the last months of her life, Lindh was heavily involved in the referendum on Sweden's entry into the Eurozone, scheduled for September 14, 2003. Polls predicted that public opinion preferred to keep the Swedish krona, for what the Social Democratic Party relied on the popularity of the minister to defend the adhesion to the euro.

Death

Plate dedicated to Anna Lindh in Medborgarplatsen, Stockholm.

On September 10, 2003, while shopping in a department store in Stockholm around 4:00 p.m., Lindh was stabbed by an unknown person carrying a knife and fled the scene after a few seconds. At that time, the minister she was not accompanied by the Security Service bodyguards. Despite the fact that she was immediately transferred to the Karolinska Hospital and was in intensive care, the doctors could not save her life: her death occurred on September 11 at 5:29 in the morning.

Swedish police provided the identity of the main suspect after checking security footage. They showed a person wearing a cap and tracksuit fleeing the scene of the crime. On September 16, the arrest as the alleged perpetrator of Mijailo Mijailović, a Swedish citizen of Serb descent with a criminal record, was confirmed, and a week later it was confirmed that there were traces of his DNA in nearby tests. After confessing to authorship in January 2004, the case went through several instances until the Supreme Court sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The police ruled out that the motive was linked to the eurozone referendum, and always pointed to an irrational hatred of the aggressor for the political class. Mijailović himself gave an interview in 2011 to the tabloid Expressen in which he confirmed that he had committed the crime without premeditation, and that he did not hesitate to attack Lindh when he found her by chance in the department store. In fact, a day before he had run into the liberal politician Lars Leijonborg, but could not attack him because at that moment he did not have his knife.

Legacy

Anna Lindh's stone in Katarina church cemetery.

Lindh was one of the most popular figures in the Social Democratic Party, so his death shocked the Swedish population. The electoral campaign of the referendum on the Eurozone was cancelled, but the political parties agreed to keep the vote on the scheduled date, also praying that the news did not influence her vote. Three days after the crime, the Swedes voted overwhelmingly to keep the Swedish krona, as reflected in previous polls.

On September 19, a state funeral was held in Stockholm City Hall, attended by King Carl XVI Gustaf, all the ministers of Göran Persson's government, and numerous personalities from national and international politics. His mortal remains they were buried in the Katarina church cemetery. In the same way, the citizens expressed their condolences by leaving candles and roses at the gates of the Rosenbad.

Two years after her death, the Union for the Mediterranean promoted the creation of the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures, dedicated to promoting intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean region.