Tourist dispute deserves objective view

Editor’s note: A dispute between three Chinese tourists and a Swedish hostel staff and police in Stockholm on the night of Sept 2 has sparked a heated public debate. Some blame the Swedish hostel staff and police for the incident while some others criticize the tourists for making a fuss and damaging Chinese people’s image abroad. Three experts share their views on the issue with China Daily’s Liu Jianna. Excerpts follow:

Tourists should notify embassy when in trouble

The key details about what made the Swedish police force a Chinese national and his parents out of the hostel are not yet clear. Whether the hostel staff and the police were forced to remove the Chinese tourists from the hostel after gentle persuasion failed or whether they were brutal in their approach would determine the nature of the case and which party was in the wrong side.

But it is crucial, as Chinese Ambassador to Sweden Gui Congyou said in an interview, for Chinese tourists to notify the Chinese embassy in the destination country if they face trouble. In the future, whenever Chinese tourists encounter trouble overseas, they should contact the Chinese embassy as soon as possible. The involvement of the Chinese embassy on behalf of Chinese nationals could reduce, even resolve, unnecessary conflicts.

The Swedish procuratorates declared the police didn’t violate law. In fact the social mood should be taken into account. The parliamentary elections in Sweden early this month indicated voters’ growing dissatisfaction with the government’s management on security and refugees.

The Swedish authorities should order a thorough probe into the incident to find what actually happened on the eventful night and offer a convincing response to the incident. Anyway if humanitarian care had been made in the case, the small dispute would not escalate into such a big row.

Zhang Min, a research fellow at the Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.