Degree of Employment amongst Oslo's Immigrants

On International Women's Day the Norwegian evening newspaper Aftenposten Aften published an interesting article with a graph showing the degree of employment for the immigrants in Oslo, split up by gender and nationality.

The graph doesn't need any further comments, but as a matter of fact it is very consistent with the results of research done by Tyra Ekhaugen two years ago showing a clear link between the number of years an immigrant has lived in Norway, the reason for his stay and his background, and whether or not he was living on public support. In the meantime we're kindly requested to believe that we'll need more immigrants to pay for our retirement pensions.

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Muslims Six Times Overrepresented in Oslo's Rape Statistics

Norway's most important paper Aftenposten ran a story earlier this week saying that 65% of the rape crimes in Oslo were committed by foreigners, even though they only represent a mere 23% of the population in the Norwegian capital. The article was prompted by a call by the Rape Commission (Voldtektsutvalget) to the imams to put rapes and the attitude against women on the agenda.

Foreigners are more than six times overrepresented in crime statistics concerning rapes in Oslo. During the first two months of this year sixteen rapes and rape attempts have been committed, and the three men the police are looking for in connection with four of those cases have one thing in common: they all have a foreign background. Especially Somalis and Iraqis seem to be well represented in the statistics.

Even though the article doesn't do much more than quoting some simple basic facts, it was nevertheless a bit controversial. The social democratic minister Bjarne Håkon Hanssen reacted quickly to condemnthe tone of the article since it made a link between rapes and Muslims. According to him, asking the imams for help is wrong, «because we don't ask Norwegian bishops for help either when a Norwegian rapes somebody». Apparently the man hadn't noticed that the debate had started precisely because of the enormous overrepresentation of Muslims in the rape statistics. And I wouldn't even dare to suggest he could have another agenda then trying to reduce the number of rapes in the Norwegian capital.

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