Here’s Why Elaf Ali’s Whore Joke is Not “Freedom of Expression”
The falsehoods pillaring it are just one aspect of this disgraceful incident
This article was mostly written by Anastasia Vorobiova, a human rights lawyer, holding an LLM degree from Lund University. She is currently a research assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. I have edited it, adding some parts to strengthen the argument.
“Ukrainian refugee women are ‘blond and have blue eyes’, so they blend in well everywhere in Sweden, but are most noticeable in brothels.”
This line, uttered by Iraq-born Swedish commentator Elaf Ali during a TV show on SVT last week, caused a major uproar in both Sweden and abroad.
Labeled as a “joke”, it saw the Ukrainian Embassy in Sweden request that Ali apologize for it. She did not. Furthermore, she took to X (Twitter) to justify her blunt attack with some sex-shopping statistics while the SVT spokesperson issued a statement claiming that her remark was within the margin of freedom of expression.
But is it really so? We examine this “joke’s” premises and explain why legally it falls outside of the “freedom of speech” scope.
That mysterious Swedish brothel
Let’s begin with the essentials. Ali’s “joke” rests on two premises. One is that Ukrainians are “blonde and blue-eyed” and second that there’s a mysterious “brothel” out there where they stand out from the crowd.
Neither of these is true.
The racial stereotype that Ukrainians look like ethnic Scandinavians, which is also part of this attack disguised as a joke, is false. Ukraine is home to many ethnic communities – from the Slavs and the Greeks to Armenians and Jews – which has resulted in centuries-long racial and ethnic mingling. A classic Ukrainian if you will is naturally white – but s/he is also more likely to have green or hazel eyes and dark blonde or maroon hair.
Very few people actually fall into the “blonde and blue-eyed” category – a circumstance that not only exposes Ali’s ignorance but also emphasizes her overt racism. It is mildly put, hard to imagine that Swedish TV would allow a “joke” akin to it, targetting the shape of Asian’s eyes or the color of Arabic skin without its teller facing severe repercussions.
Furthermore, it is illegal to run a brothel in Sweden, as well as buy sex. So, if Elaf Ali inspected the cryptic brothel with Ukrainians, as a law-abiding citizen, she would be obliged to report this incident to Swedish law enforcement. As well as explain the ethnicity of the brothel’s “remaining group” given that they’re neither blonde nor blue-eyed, as per Ali’s logic.
Soft antics aside, the problem with this “joke”, pillared by two falsehoods, is that Ukrainian females have been among the primary victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation since the 1990s. “Tens of thousands” of young women, who had never been abroad due to the Iron Curtain, were tricked by transnational organized groups who later sold them into prostitution and slavery. The story of Danguolė Rasalaitė, a Lithuanian national who was forced into prostitution in Arlöv and later committed suicide, is one of the most disturbing examples of the latter.
The sex-trafficking problems aggravated after the full-scale invasion when organized traffic groups started hunting Ukrainian women and girls on EU borders and later their trace was lost.
Though it can be the subject of a joke, such jokes must be crafted in a way that has a benevolent, not malign intention of vilifying a group that suffers from war, sex trafficking, and lack of financial means to live a dignified life.
Ali’s attempt was clearly the latter as she refused to take the heat or apologize.
Furthermore, her utterance plays into the “sexy Ukrainian women” hetero stereotype that persists in the West even though a plethora of Ukrainian women now work as beauticians, IT specialists, designers, journalists, lawyers, and academics in the West. Some found jobs immediately after coming around to Sweden as hairdressers and manicurists.
It is also music to the Kremlin propaganda’s ears. For decades, Russia has been slandering Ukrainian women, with Ukrainian media outlet Detector Media recently emphasizing that Russian propaganda continues doing it to this day.
ECHR, CEDAW, CERD, and obligation to combat gender stereotyping
There is, however, another important aspect to this story. It pertains to legal matters – and they cast serious doubt on the SVT’s freedom of expression argument.
On the one hand, freedom of expression indeed covers statements that may ‘offend, shock or disturb’ (Handyside vs. UK). On the other hand, in 2004, the ECtHR ruled, for example, that linking all Muslims as a group with the ‘grave act of terrorism’ (Norwood vs. the United Kingdom) would fall short of ‘freedom of Applicant’s expression’. The ECtHR further elaborated that such expression would notably contradict the values prescribed within the Convention, such as ‘tolerance, social peace and non-discrimination’.
Labeling all Ukrainian women in Sweden as ‘prostitutes’ is hardly any different from linking all Muslims as a group with the ‘grave act of terrorism’. It invokes both gender and racial dimensions, aggravated by the situation of forced displacement that affected most Ukrainian women in Sweden.
There’s a law for that.
Article 5(a) CEDAW requires States Parties to take ‘all appropriate measures’ to ‘modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women’ to eliminate practices that are based among other things on the idea of ‘stereotyped roles for men and women.’
Meanwhile, the OHCHR report on gender stereotyping highlights CEDAW’s state parties’ obligation to ‘eradicate the practice of applying stereotypical beliefs to individual women and men in ways that violate their human rights’.
According to Article 7 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), States Parties are obliged ‘to adopt immediate and effective measures’ to combat ‘prejudices which lead to racial discrimination’. Lastly, the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants highlights the importance of tackling the ‘multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against refugee and migrant women and girls’.
This was not an exercise in law-quoting, but a specific call to action.
As a party to both CEDAW and ICERD, Sweden is obliged to protect Ukrainian women from harmful gender and race stereotypes and must take positive measures in responding to any attempts to attach ‘stereotypical belief’ to their identity. The forced displacement serves as an aggravating factor in this case.
Ali’s joke can’t be unsaid but SVT, which is a public broadcaster, can still take measures to fix the situation like it did in 2018 when an apology was issued to the Chinese people for racial stereotyping in one of SVT’s shows.
For too long Ukrainian women were stripped of dignity, owning to a ‘single story’ of being labeled as ‘prostitutes’ and ‘sexy bimbos’.
We shall no longer tolerate this as our people continue to die for the right to live in our own country.
I would take down this article if I was the author. Most of your argument is based on a misquote that is so bad that it has got to be intentional.
Elaf never genders this joke, she never says "women" or anything similar, and she never says "blone and blue eyes".
And you didn't even bother to research what this show is about. A large part of the show is that the panel of 'immigrant' comedians make jokes about themselves, eachother and stereotypes around eachother.
Did Elaf go too far, yes. But nothing she did was illegal, and nothing she did deserves people like you lying to trying to smear her.
This so called "Swedish journalist 's joke' is a complete disgrace! Shame on you, caricature of a woman, elaf ali , for your cowardness and disgusting filthy racial comments!