The Swedish authorities have accused Russia of trying to influence how Koran burnings are viewed around the world through disinformation campaigns written in Arabic.
It is believed to be part of an attempt to disrupt Sweden’s Nato membership process, which is still waiting for approval by Turkey and Hungary. Sweden’s psychological defence agency, part of the Ministry of Defence, said that the Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik had published a series of articles in Arabic, falsely claiming that the Swedish government supported Koran burning.
Since the end of June, the authorities have logged about a million similar posts in Arabic and other languages. The warning from the agency – a cold war-era body brought back last year to fight foreign disinformation as tensions with Russia escalated – follows another burning in a spate of such desecrations in Sweden.
Two Iraqi men, Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem, who have been involved in previous incidents, were permitted to burn a Koran outside parliament, prompting outrage and further intensifying the diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Muslim countries around the world.
The Swedish government is under mounting global pressure to prevent further protests but has so far ruled out changing the country’s far-ranging freedom of expression laws.
Mikael Östlund, a spokesperson for the psychological defence agency, said that since Momika and Najem burned a Koran outside Stockholm Mosque on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in June, disinformation online had increased exponentially. Among those spreading the false narratives, he said, were states and Islamist extremists.
As the pattern of disinformation builds over time, it becomes easier for people to believe that the false narratives are true, he said.
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, alluded to foreign actors playing a role in the Koran burnings, accusing outsiders of using the country as “a stage for spreading hateful messages”.
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