Unlike many other European countries, Sweden has not imposed a strict lockdown amid a pandemic.
Stockholm:
Three children in Sweden were taken from the house after their parents locked them up for four months over fears of catching the coronavirus, the youth lawyer said on Wednesday.
Between March and early July, the children, aged 10 to 17, and the family “were prohibited from leaving the apartment,” lawyer Mikael Svegfors told AFP.
The children were not allowed to see each other, locked in their own rooms and ate their meals there, the Jonkoping Administrative Court in southern Sweden said.
In addition, the door to the house had been “nailed down” so that no one could come out, the court found.
Parents deny locking the children up against their will and plan to appeal the decision, local radio reported.
Unlike many other European countries, Sweden has not imposed a strict lockdown and has kept schools open to children under 16.
The Scandinavian country has one of the highest Covid-19 death rates in the world relative to the population, with 575 deaths per million.
The parents “come from another part of the world” and do not speak Swedish fluently, lawyer Svegfors said.
“They couldn’t really understand the news here. They continued to follow the internet news feed from their former country” which had imposed much stricter containment measures.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
