Misleading Norwegian TV report on the findings of police study of rapes in Oslo
Last week the National Secular Society’s favourite “comedian” Pat Condell posted his latest video on YouTube. Entitled “Islamic cultural terrorism”, it was enthusiastically received by Condell’s fellow anti-Muslim racists in the English Defence League.
As we have pointed out before, one of the most sickening aspects of Condell’s increasingly unhinged anti-Muslim rants is his obsession with “immigrant rapists”. In this latest video Condell asserts, with regard to the Norwegian capital of Oslo, that “all the rapes in that city over the past three years – all of them – were committed by Muslim immigrants using rape as a weapon of cultural terrorism”.
The source that Condell gives for this claim – which had already been taken up by the British National Party and other far-rightists – is a news report by the Norwegian TV station NRK that stated: “In Oslo all sexual assaults involving rape in the past year have been committed by males of non-western background – this was the conclusion of a police report published today. This means that in every single rape assault in the last five years, where the rapist could be identified, he was a man of foreign origin.”
The police report referred to is Voldtekt i den globale byen (Rape in the global city) which provides a detailed analysis of the rape statistics in Oslo during 2010. The report in fact shows that, of 131 individuals charged with the 152 rapes in which the perpetrator could be identified, 45.8% were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin while the majority – 54.2% – were of Norwegian, other European or American origin.
The claim that “all rapists in Oslo are immigrants” is based exclusively on the figures for “assault rape”, i.e. rape aggravated by physical violence, a category that included only 6 of the 152 cases and 5 of the 131 identified individuals. All of those 5 individuals were indeed of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin. However, the police report adds that in other cases of assault rape, where the individual responsible was not identified and the police relied on the description provided by the victim, “8 of the perpetrators were African / dark-skinned appearance, 5 were Western / light / Nordic and 4 had an Asian appearance”. Which falls some way short of substantiating the claim that all perpetrators of aggravated rape in Oslo are of non-western origin, never mind the assertion that “Muslim immigrants” are responsible for all rapes in the city.
The police report also points out that “it must be stressed that the strong over-representation of people from minority backgrounds for several types of rape can not be interpreted as meaning that foreign culture is a causal explanation of rape” and that “the statistical difference in criminal behaviour between ethnic groups disappears when controlling for socio-economic conditions”. It concludes: “Gross generalisations that have given the impression that the rapists are only foreigners – and largely Muslim – prove inadequate and erroneous.”
In other words, on the basis of their detailed factual analysis the Norwegian police draw exactly the opposite conclusion about rape in Oslo from that promoted in Pat Condell’s latest anti-Muslim video rant. But then, when have facts ever been of any concern to racist bigots like Condell?
Update: See also Ali Abunimah, “Debunked: the Zionist and Islamophobic libel of a ‘rape epidemic’ by Muslims in Norway”, Electronic Intifada, 29 December 2011