Article published August 27, 2025 Stockholm, Sweden by SUSANNE BERGER, on Substack READ IN APP
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Every week, Diane Foley marks “Moral Courage Monday” (#MoralCourageMonday) by sharing examples of ordinary people doing not-so-ordinary things on behalf of their fellow human beings. Foley is the founder and director of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation – an American human rights organization that supports US citizens held hostage or otherwise illegally detained abroad.
The weekly notes serve as a tribute to the grace and compassion Foley’s son James Wright Foley showed during his two years of imprisonment in Syria, and the support he received from his fellow prisoners in return. James, who was working as a conflict journalist, was kidnapped in 2012 by forces associated with the Islamic State (IS) and brutally murdered two years later.
#MoralCourageMonday is not only inspiring but reminds us that all of us – governments and private citizens alike – can and must meet the challenge when lives are at risk and our values are threatened. Rendering aid is both a duty and a privilege, Foley keeps emphasizing, because, as she says, “in democratic societies, our citizens are our greatest assets and, in fact, our greatest treasure.”
As it happened, a few weeks ago, during a meeting with representatives from several international human rights organizations, a Swedish colleague and I were asked if there was not anybody in Sweden with a strong public profile who would advocate on behalf of the three Swedish citizens who have been arbitrarily detained abroad for a combined 43 years now. Dawit Isaak (Eritrea, 23 years); Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali (9 1/2 years) and Gui Minhai (almost 10 years). To these activists it seemed unfathomable that with a few notable exceptions, no Swedish official, no current parliamentarians or other prominent individuals are taking a clear and consistent public stance in any one of these three cases.1
From left to right: Swedish diplomat Raoul G. Wallenberg disappeared in the Soviet Union in 1945. 80 years later, the full circumstances of his fate remain unknown. Gui Minhai was abducted from Thailand and has been imprisoned in China since 2015. His family has not had a sign of live from him in seven years. Dawit Isaak has been held without charge or trial in Eritrea. His current location and physical condition are unknown. Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on unsubstantiated espionage charges.
“For the three current Swedish citizens languishing in foreign prisons, no hero has come to the rescue.”
Every year, Swedish politicians dutifully laud the humanitarian activism of Sweden’s outstanding human rights heroes like the young diplomat Raoul G. Wallenberg, who together with his colleagues and members of the Hungarian resistance protected thousands of Jews from certain death during the horrific last chapter of the Holocaust in Hungary in 1944; and fellow Swedish diplomat Harald Edelstam who saved countless persecuted Jews in Norway during that same war, and later helped shelter more than one thousand frightened people as the military seized power in Chile in 1973.
However, for the three current Swedish citizens languishing in foreign prisons, no hero has come to the rescue – Swedish or otherwise. There has been no national outcry, no rousing popular support for these three men who were born abroad but decided to make Sweden their home, precisely because it welcomed individuals like them with open arms: a refugee from Eritrea’s brutal dictatorship, who is a prize winning playwright and journalist; a student of history who left China to earn a PhD at the University of Gothenburg, who is also a noted poet and successful publisher; and a physician from the Islamic Republic of Iran, a prominent medical scholar and lecturer, a graduate of the prestigious Karolinska Institutet’s doctoral program.
All three became Swedish citizens. Their children grew up in Sweden, attended Swedish schools and have Swedish friends. These children saw their mothers left to fend for themselves entirely alone once tragedy struck. Just like the families of other Swedish citizens lost decades ago, including the wives and children of the men on the Tp 79 (DC-3) aircraft that was shot down over the Baltic Sea in 1952; the loved ones of the more than one hundred Swedish sailors who disappeared during the Cold War; or the relatives of the Estonia ferry disaster in 1994.
From left to right: The Swedish ship Kinnekulle M/S disappeared in February 1948 with a seven men crew, one of more than a dozen ships that vanished during the Cold War; The DC-3 aircraft that was shot down in June 1952 over the Baltic Sea with a crew of eight; the ferry Estonia which sank in 1994, claiming 852 lives.
But it is not only official Sweden that has failed them. All of us have done so, to one degree or another, and so has the rules-based international system that is crumbling around us. What good are the dozens of international laws, declarations and conventions, on enforced disappearance and hostage-taking, on universal jurisdiction and protecting the rights of civilians, when those in power are unwilling or unable to enforce them?
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. defined moral courage as an “inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.” In other words, true courage lies in taking action when the cause demands it, despite daunting odds. It is our “restless conscience”, as the filmmaker Hava Kohav Beller called it in her 1992 award winning documentary about the German resistance to Hitler, that drives us forward, despite our reflexive search for safety, popularity, or compromise.
The Restless Conscience – Oscar nominated documentary film by Hava Kohav Beller, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102778/; The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It is by no means too late – we can still right the ship. Dawit Isaak, Ahmadreza Djalali and Gui Minhai are all believed to be alive. The popular outcry from the Swedish media and the public on behalf of Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus (who was held for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2022 before being freed last year in a botched prisoner exchange that left Ahmadreza Djalali behind); and journalist Joakim Medin, arrested in Turkey earlier this year and later freed, but still facing spurious criminal charges, is proof that Sweden is indeed willing to fight for its own.
All of us understand how fiendishly difficult and risky complex cases involving arbitrary detentions can be. It is easy to get discouraged or shrink from the challenge. But courageous human rights defenders like James Foley, Raoul Wallenberg and Harald Edelstamcontinue to show us the way. Swedish society gave rise to the latter two men and can lead the way forward once again, in close cooperation with its international partners.
US journalist James W. Foley, https://jamesfoleyfoundation.org/; Swedish diplomat Harald Edelstam, https://www.edelstam.org/
Hopefully Swedish journalists will finally make loud and passionate demands to boycott imports from China and call on the Swedish public to forgo traveling there as they did in the case of Turkey and Joakim Medin. Maybe there will be a slew of bake sales and fundraisers to offer hands-on support to the affected three families, to let them know they are not fighting alone. Possibly even Swedish business leaders and public institutions will decide to inject real meaning into the rules of “good governance” inscribed in their formal code of conduct. And maybe Swedish officials will not merely threaten serious consequences for the horrendous and continuing crimes committed against their own citizens but will actually find the courage to enact them.
Perhaps Swedish officials will also stop complaining about the enormous workload the cases of prolonged foreign detentions and unsolved disappearances create and instead find the resources to hire much needed additional personnel. Maybe, upon self-reflection, they will even be inclined to institute urgently required administrative reforms and changes that enable them to work more effectively and seek more creative solutions. Hopefully, it will allow them to meet families with greater empathy and compassion.
And maybe, just maybe, those in the public limelight and holding prominent positions in Swedish society will finally find their voice, to let their fellow citizens know that they are not forgotten, that they care – and that they really, really want them home.
- Numerous human rights organizations, individual journalists and former EU parliamentarians have strongly advocated all three cases. ↩︎
