On this day, 30 years ago, the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was cold-bloodedly murdered on a street in Stockholm, the Swedish capital. Up until today, the culprits of the assassination have not been tried and judged. As a matter of fact, the perpetrator and the motive are still unknown.
February 28, 1986 is a day that all Swedish grown-ups remember. Practically every Swede can recall what she or he was doing at the moment when the news about the murder broke.
It was a shock to my country, which had been able to avoid the world wars that had struck the continent, and which had been almost free from terrorism and political violence.
I met Olof Palme once. During the campaign for the general elections in 1982, he held a campaign meeting in my small home-town. I was a teenager with an emerging interest in politics. Mr Palme was famous for his rhetoric skills. He did not disappoint me at that meeting.
Olof Palme is remembered as one of the first Swedish politicians with a passion for international affairs and a strong conviction in the human rights. He fought to eliminate colonialism and support the self-determination of the nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
In the divide between the USA and the Soviet Union, he insisted that there is a third way, a path of neutrality and non-alignment.
“Peace was his most important task, because he saw war as the greatest threat to humankind,” said Ingvar Carlsson, close collaborator and successor as prime minister, at Palme’s funeral.
The fight against racism was at Palme’s heart.
He was an early critic of apartheid during the 1970s -- far from obvious for a Western political leader at the time -- and made possible financial and material support to the ANC in South Africa.
At home in Sweden, he introduced legislation to promote equality between men and women, and to give women the power to shape their lives, to get an employment and to have an income.
The legacy of Olof Palme lives on. Even if the world in many aspects has made progress in these 30 years, the visions of this Swedish statesman are still being realised.
