Dan Park: Racism masquerades as art

Jallow Momodou, a Swedish activist and National Co-ordinator of the European Network Against Racism, has been the target of racist attacks for standing strong in his fight against the much ignored racism within Swedish society. Recently Momodou was depicted in a poster, along with two other black men, wearing a noose around their heads as if they were about to be hanged.

The poster displayed the phrase, “Hang on Afrofobians,” and not only included a picture of each man, but also showed their full names over their foreheads.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident. The author of the poster, street artist and provocateur Dan Park, is known for creating posters that spark racial hatred, and had already targeted Momodou previously. Nearly three years ago, Momodou reported a group of Lund University students to the police for hosting a jungle party in which they held a slave auction.

The activist, who should have been rewarded for this act, was instead subject to racial harassment of all sorts; he received angry phone calls and threats against his life and the lives of his family members. However, nothing was as shocking as the poster that Park created and posted all over Momodou’s work place. This poster depicted the activist as a slave who had run away from his master and asked for help in capturing him.

Momodou was able to file a case against Park for defamation and incitement of racial hatred, and won the legal battle. The artist was sentenced to probation and had to pay a fine, yet he avoided any jail time, even though this wasn’t his first brush with the law over similar crimes.

The judge argued that he was lenient on Park because he knew Park would never do anything like this again. Nevertheless, around the time of the trial, Park himself declared that he didn’t regret making the posters and that nothing the police did would make him stop creating this type of art.

With the most recent incident, Park showed his commitment to his previous declaration. He was once again taken to court for the poster of the three men plus two other posters which show the true nature of the racism he calls art. The verdict of this case is still pending, but the authorities are holding him for yet another suspicion of racial hatred in one of his most recent works.

It is appalling that Park still hasn’t even received a day of jail time for these crimes. Maybe, if he had received a more severe punishment for the first poster he created to harass Momodou, he would not have created the second poster, in which he showed not only the Momodou, but also Yusupha Sallah, a man violently beaten by a gang in front of his son because of his skin colour, and Aaron Alexis, the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a Navy courtyard in Washington.

Momodou describes Sweden as, “a country where racism is just a joke,” and the events outlined in this article prove the activist right. Even the students who held the jungle party three years ago did not suffer any real consequences for their action as the university only verbally reprimanded them and the court decided not to press charges because the party was a costume party so re-enacting the theme of a slave auction was deemed acceptable.

These incidences reveal a deep injustice in Swedish society. Dan Park has hijacked the vehicle of art, to reveal his racist views in a culturally acceptable way. In a country where there seems to be no reasonable consequences to racist acts, and where wider society appears to deem these hateful acts and racial slurs as ‘entertaining’, how can minority communities feel that they are valued and how can activists like Jallow Momodou feel safe fighting for what they believe is right.

Angelica Encinales