GOTLAND- Sweden - The first ever Kurdish migrant who seemingly sought refuge in Sweden nearly a century ago appears to be a young man from Turkey’s Kurdistan, who came to the remote Swedish island of Gotland in 1929 and died there in 1981.
Newspaper articles from the time of his arrival describe the young Sleman Alexander Knutas as a Yezidi Kurd who initially fled Turkey towards neighboring Ukraine, where he came in touch with a Swedish family who then took the young refugee to Sweden.
There have been at least two more Kurds who have visited and lived in Sweden prior to Sleman’s journey to the Nordic country, but with the difference that they did not come as refugees.
Mirza Seid, from Iranian Kurdistan, visited Sweden sometime in 1893 and the better-known Sherif Pasha, a Kurd, lived in Sweden between 1898 and 1908 as the Ottoman Empire’s ambassador to Stockholm.
Sleman appears to have lived his entire adult life on the remote southern island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea with the Knutas family he married into after they left Ukraine and settled on the island.
In the interview conducted by two local Swedish journalists Sleman introduces himself as Yezidi Kurd and briefly tells his journey.
Gotland is well known in Sweden for its annual summer debates among the country’s elite politicians and businessmen.
Unlike many other areas in Sweden where foreigners live and work, the high cost of housing and lack of job opportunities has distinctively made it difficult for people outside the island to live in Gotland.
Rudaw spoke with apparently the only Kurd on the Island who studies programming at the Gotland University College.
“I have a quiet but hard life here,” Ara Muhammad told Rudaw. “The rents here almost quadruple in the summer when the annual meetings are held,” Ari said, which is why most contracts expire before the summer, with landlords requiring considerably higher rents, he explained.
There are over 100,000 Kurds living in Sweden who predominantly come from the Middle East but there are also few Kurds from former Soviet republics living in Sweden.
Kurds are represented partly by five Kurdish lawmakers in the parliament and over the past decade have produced a range of public figures in both the entertainment and media as in the case of Kurdish singer Darin and comedian Öz Nujen, among others.