UFF recruits youth

 

from Dagens Nyheter, Sweden,  29 December 2001.

[in Swedish]     [in German]

In a flat in Rinkeby (in Stockholm) live ten young people from all over the world.    They work at UFF without getting paid.    Hundreds of youngsters every year are drawn to attend UFF as volunteers.    They think that they are going to do an insats for helping poor people in reality it is all about a recruiting campaign for the Danish sect the Teachers Group/Tvind movement, who run UFF.

Those who attend make over their financial assets to the TG and promise to let the comrades decide about their time.     DN has met three women who has been in touch with the Teachers Group.

  It says sterdahl on the door to the flat. A Finnish High-School-drop-out opens the door and shows around. Ten beds in two rooms, sleeping bags, mattresses, a choke fan and cigarette smoke that refuses to divert. Here ten young people live. They work nine hours a day, six days a week, without payment. They are paying on a debt.

  They are called solidarity workers and are drawn from all over the world. They work for UFF, and live together in a flat that UFF rent in Rinkeby, north suburb of  Stockholm. They receive 300 SEK/week for food and other expenses. Only at the UFF Flea-market in Huvudsta are constantly 1-3 foreign young people working for free in this way. They are paying a debt to Amdi Petersen, working to earn for a school-fee.

Even though they are working at UFF in shops, cloths sorting, cloths collecting and at the flea market UFF has no responsibility of them, the association claims. It is the Danish Else-Marie Pedersen who is their boss. She comes every week in order to check them. Else-Marie Pedersen works for the recruiting organ of the Teacher Group.

When DN makes the interview in the flat, the youngsters are full of questions about Amdi Petersen and the Teachers Group, that they only have been hearing about, even though they are working for him.

Then Else-Marie Pedersen turns up. She gets totally furious when she discovers a journalist in UFFs flat in Rinkeby.

-         This is a crime of home peace! she roars.

-         Get out from here!

Then she calls frenetically on her mobile phone and starts tearing around in the flat. It looks like she is clearing away documents.  

After a while one of the youngsters come out, a German boy. He goes away.

-         She says that journalists are the devil and that we are not allowed to talk to you. We are just some poor young people who has got into a jam. This is really unpleasant, he continues and jumps on the bus.

An exclusive flat where a discrete Dane lives. He has got neighbours like Julia Roberts and Robert de Niro. Mr Petersen has not been photographed in twenty years; It is almost like he is not existing. Anyway Mogens Amdi Petersen has got all power of those ten persons in the worn flat in Rinkeby.

 

(More or less the same story that already is on Tvindalert, Autumn 1999 in Winestead Hall England. )

 

Annelie never made it to Africa. But Lisa Karlsson did (assumed name), today a physician. Lisa was recruited by reading a poster at Kulturhuset at Sergels Torg, Stockholm. She wanted to make a practical effort in Africa and went on a course with the Travelling High School.

-         We travelled through many countries and as we had a very small budget, we went by through hitch-hiking and sleeping over where we could, at strangers, wherever. It was instructive, but also somehow dangerous, as when we thought of  hitch-hiking through a country that was in a civil war.

Lisa was on her way deeper into the organisation, towards the sect-like centre, and became member on a two-years-contract. Those who become members of lifetime sign a contract that all their economical assets, inheritances and such are left to the Teachers Group. Then they will receive pocket money and costs will be paid from the common economy.

Now she also saw that it was not as easy to withdraw.

-         We held big common meetings where we were exposed to hard critics from the comrades. Once somebody said she wanted to go home and they said lets not make a break in the meeting until she has changed her mind. We kept on the whole night until she broke down and said that she didnt want to go home any more. Then they said that it doesnt sound like you mean what you say. We will continue until you sound sincere.

-         - When I saw how that treatment affected her psyche, I understood that I did not by any means want to expose myself to that.

Lisa Karlsson worked with a literacy teaching project. It didnt work out very well, as the Scandinavian youth she was leading was to stay for a too short period to be able to teach anybody to read and write. The education was done without co-operation from - or even against the education ministry in the country.

-         Once one of the life-time members told me straight forward, that the important thing was not to teach Africans to read, it was to recruit members to the Teachers Group. Then the work didnt feel meaningful any more, Lisa says.

After a while Lisa Karlsson started to have strange attacks where she fainted and she needed to come to a doctor for a X-ray examination. When she was on her way to a hospital in a neighbouring country, she was robbed on her passport and money. One of the comrades in the teacher group didnt have the courage to give her those 100 kronor that was the cost of the examination without first asking the sect. That was when Lisa ran away.

-         Normally all the passports were locked in, but as I was in another country, I had been given mine back. When I was at the Swedish consulate to get a new passport, I took a chance. I called my mom who sent money that covered costs for a ticket  to Spain.

-         When I left for the airport I remember that I was hoping for no-one from the Teacher Group to take the same plane. I was still so much in their grip that it would have been enough with them waving a little with their hand and I would have followed them back, Lisa Karlsson says.

From Spain she hitch-hiked home to Sweden. When she finally was examined at the hospital, she received the diagnosis of panic anxiety.

 

Stina Fernstrm has been so far in the Teachers Group that you can come. She got the number 33. Stina was there when sect members sterilised themselves when Amdi didnt want to pay contraceptives. The argument was that it was egoistic to have children and it would not been allowed. She was there when Amdi Petersen went further and forbade members to have sexual relations. The relationship between comrades within the  Teachers Group must be the strongest.

All women cut their hair short and got defeminized.

When Stina Fernstrm finally broke up from Tvind it was with a heavy step. She was broken down, without self confidence and could neither laugh nor cry. She didnt feel worthy enough  to be with, she was not good enough, felt sorry for Amdi Petersen who had to meet her in the corridors. She went home to celebrate Christmas and didnt return.

At the same time she knew that they wouldnt let her go that easily. She had been bookkeeper of Amdi Petersen during nine years. She was there when the Teachers Group made their first million to Amdi Petersen. Stina knew every single payment the sect had made. She had all comrades names memorised in her head as it was not allowed to write them down.

That Christmas she sat in her mothers home and knew that within two hours there would be somebody from the sect knocking on the door.

Stina went under ground.

Stina Fernstrm became member of the Teachers Group in the beginning of the 70s. Amdi Petersen forbade the members of the sect to read newspapers and to watch TV, while he at the same time built up a strong picture of a threatening outside which mended the group together.

-         Afterwards I have understood some of the oppressing mechanisms. We got almost never enough sleep, which is an efficient way of keeping us under control. Then it was the fact that we never were doing good enough. I was in a situation where I had to always act and he made sure that what ever I did it was the wrong thing. Then one shrinks, says Stina.

The Teachers Group held big meetings where there should be real democracy, everybody should be agreeing, or the meetings were not supposed to have a break. Amdi Petersen did, with his charisma and with his verbal ability, get along well. He came with creative proposals that were applauded for long while and then accepted. Once, when somebody had disagreed with Amdi Petersen, it took three days and nights before Amdi got his point through, Stina is telling.

The meetings could appear as a lengthy mobbing sessions. They were each others siblings, Amdi Petersen taught the members, that what they had, was the only true love. All others in the society were living on surrogates. At the same time they were each others enemies; controlling and criticising one another on the meetings  as they otherwise risked to get criticised themselves.

In the teachers group anybody could get what ever task. Somebody could get the responsibility to build a school.

-         If you didnt succeed as the task was too big, you anyway had to carry the responsibility, you could not point on the one who came out with the proposal in the first place, Amdi. To get criticism for something that you have tried your best for but had no possibility to manage, that is psychological torture.

After some time it seemed like Amdi Petersen got more and more paranoid. He held armed guards, came home and left mostly at nights, encouraged the members of TG to burn their letters, photo albums and other private things. The Teachers Group was tapped, when you talked about Amdi one should say The others. There are traitors and spies among us, said  Amdi.

It went so far, that mail was checked through, because Amdi Petersen had explained that there could come bombs in letters. And so was the decision made to kill infiltrators.

-         We were in one of the big meetings, 100-150 well bred Danes and Swedes with middle class background, and we unified decided that we would be able to kill the one among us who was a traitor! Only one person left the room before the decision was made, and that was because she was a nurse and had sworn an oath to always protect lives. 

-         Yes, I think I would have been able to kill then, says Stina Fernstrm today.

One day Stina understood that some members of the sect were more important than others.

-         One could enter a room and understand that they were talking about something we didnt know about. It was very painful to realise, as we all should be equally important and this included to get the same information.

But what Amdi Petersen had done, was that he had built up a structure with cells where nobody knew about more than his own group. Some could sit in more than one cell. Some nights different groups sat down in their cars and went for secret meetings. In the morning they were back, and pretended as nothing had happened.

-         One became an expert in being double and in keeping a good face, to pretend as one understood what the discussions were about, Stina explains.

Stina knew that it was difficult to leave the sect, to break the psychological ties. It took two years from that Christmas when she broke up until she dared to go to town. She had been living at an old friends from the times she was into theatre, before the sect. Nobody knew that she was there, not even Stinas mother. Still the sect had phoned to the friend and asked for Stina.

One day at hlns (a department store), she bumped into one of her old comrades who still today is in the Teachers Group.

-         Stina!

They greeted.

-         Stina, shouldnt we go and call The others?

Like a sleepwalker Stina followed Marja to the telephone cabin. Marja looked for coins to be able to phone to Amdi Petersen. Didnt find any.

-         Could you wait here and I will go and change, she said.

Then the powerlessness was broken. Stina put her hand on Marjas arm.

-         Marja, it is no use calling. I wont follow you back. I have to go now.

 

The teachers group started to grow in the beginning of the 70s with the charismatic leader, Amdi Petersen as leader. Strategically the sharp minded leader developed the group into a sect, with all what it means of unindependence and brainwashing. It was found at Tvind, Denmark, and has therefore been called the Tvind movement.

It started with that Amdi Petersen and some of his followers travelled around in developing countries in a used mini-bus. They came home, shocked by the state there, and were inspired to start The Travelling Highschool and The Necessary Teachers College. The thought was to educate young people in knowledge about developing countries. The back-thought was to recruit people to the nascent sect Teachers Group. The teachers received state support for the schools and salaries. After a while a third thought was developed: the students could be educated to development work in the third world. At the same time the Teachers Group made contacts to liberation movements in Africa, among others they supported Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

The movement grew next to other left wing radical organisations and collectives, but was distinguished by not only having common economy, but demanding common time from the members as well and they were pushed to hard work.

When UFF was started up, the big money started to come in. Then the idealistic stamp was fading and the companies started to become plenty. DN has been informed that it was on a straight order from Amdi Petersen, when UFF in Sweden was started up. The concept was simple: Sweden is the country where most clothes of the best quality are thrown away. 

  The Teachers Group rules UFF in Sweden. All sitting in the board of directors, are in the Teachers Group. They claim it to be a private matter and that it has nothing to do with UFF. But the Teachers Group has always ruled, whether it is about UFF-associations, the international development organisation Humana People to People or all the commercial companies, furniture factories and tree plantations that the movement runs. Almost all project leaders for the  around 150 small scale development projects in Africa are members of the Teachers Group. The closer they are to Amdi, the higher up in the hierarchy they can get. The Swedish representatives for UFF, Thomas Gregersen, Trond Narvestad, Jeanette Riise and Kristina Johansson are therefore under straight orders and are in constant contact with the sect leader. Else-Marie Pedersen and other higher up in the hierarchy are controlling that they are doing what they should. DN has been in touch with staff from the Swedish UFF-shops who describe that sect members sent from Denmark and who dont introduce themselves sit behind everybody on meetings and burn documents that outsiders otherwise would get hold of.

  UFF in Sweden tries also to recruit members to the Teachers Group from the staff in the shops. The employees are manipulated and have witnessed being convinced to take action for Africa and work for free on evenings and weekends.

During the years Amdi Petersen has put on a more exclusive life style. Some months ago he was revealed as a tenant in a etage flat on the exlusive Fisher Island outside Miami, USA, having monthly costs of hundreds of thousands SEK. According to the latest information the whole movement , with teachers and the global capital , are moving to Zimbabwe, where the head quarters of Humana People to People are.  At the same time Petersens good friend Robert Mugabe has thrown all journalists that have the task to investigate, out of the country.