just a little opinion of mine. i happent to know many norwegians. i have friends.

and i can say that norwegians are not racist not they are inhospitable unlike some europeans.

its a shame that vineyards didnt check his sources a bit better and tried to start a fire like always. (possibly after a couple of nice expensive wines).

and well done for you barba!

Good advice Barba Mama....here is what I found....from Norway News

"A 63-year old Turkish woman, Dondu Tulum, had a cardiac attack at her house in Oslo on January 3. Her son-in-law, Fedai Ucarli, called for an ambulance. Since paramedics were late, he made several other calls and yelled at officers. After paramedics called the police, policemen came to Turkish family´s house and handcuffed Ucarli and his wife in the middle of the street. Neighbors witnessed the incident and recorded it. Ambulance arrived at house 45 minutes after the first call. The old woman died at home in lack of medical assistance."

Forty-five minutes for an emergency iseems like a long time to me....and accrding to this article it was a man who called, not a girl.  The ambulence took 45 minutes...hardly a short time.  There is no mention of how many patrol cars or police were sent. 

Perhaps one of the first lessons all immigrants should get is how to call emergency and how to act when calling and interacting with them.  There have been too many tragic stories in the US, resulting in death, when people called emergency and were hysterical when "help" arrived.

I know emergency workers.  They are the best people I have ever known, but they are put in a very stressful situation trying to help people who are too often hysterical.

The title is a rather sweeping statement, which I´m sure was not meant how it sounds.

In London if any one calls for an ambulance no matter what the ailment or type of emergency, if aggression or a disturbance is heard medics are never sent without police being on scene first. Sometimes this does cause a substantial delay.

I have no knowledge of how Norway fairs on the racist front as a whole but medics have their job to do without bias without predudice, but they do have the right to do their job as safely as possible.

What statement? There have been a number of them in this thread, exactly what one do you mean?

 I believe I was referring to the title, of which there is only one

Thank you for that clarification.  Don´t you think some type of basic lesson on how to interact with the emergency process would be a good idea?  In the US there have been similar incidents, and people died in those cases as well.  At least people know to dial an emergency number, it´s 911 in th US.  What the process is after dialing and help omes seems to me to be a very important part of the process that needs to be learned.

When you enter a country for an extended time, you should know what the process is and how to interact with those who are trying to help.

 It´s one of those things about who is responsible for this?

Is it the individual´s reponsibility? but then who ever thinks they are going to have to call for an ambulance or other emergency service

Is it immigration? I know here those waiting for asylum are given reams of information about healthcare, council services.

Is it up to the emegency services to educate? education processes are done through the schools.

At the end of the day if caller or patient are displaying violent or aggressive tendencies they themselves have caused a delay and should accept responsibility for their own actions

We can approach the matter in two different ways:

You must be qualified to make a call to the emergency service. You may be considered suspicious if you have an accent or speak in an excited manner.

or

Emergency Service must be qualified and trained to handle different situations professionally without expecting the inquirer to be qualified. (the inquirer can be a child, a tourist, a disabled person etc.)

If you think the first approach is true then you think it is perfectly normal to let foreigners who are not aware of the procedures to go through this and face death in the end. This approach entails that inquirer must be trained about how to ask for help from emergency first aid professionals. This approach also disregards the fact there may be panic and chaos in emergency situations and that different cultures react and handle such situations differently.

Was this approach right, they would have to hang disclaimers on the walls of customs offices notifying people that they may be arrested if they do not know the procedures in the country. Because you don´t need to be an immigrant to go through this, a tourist might as well lose his/her life due to lack of knowledge of procedures.

If you believe the second approach is the right one then you think help professionals must be qualified, trained and ready to respond to a great variety of situations on account that their job is crucially important and understanding the situation at hand and being able to extend proper help regardless of how complicated the situation can be, is their utmost priority.

Furthermore, the family is reported to have correctly explained the problem, giving proper directions to their location but were responded with silly questions like: "what is your job?" etc. Being furious when no help was sent they call the service angrily this time, the police gets there and the situation becomes terribly chaotic.

I can´t claim the family handled situation correctly. How come can you be certain about the emergency service´s way of handling all this? I have also listened to the translations of telephone conversations between the police and the emergency service and I think, the general lack of attention and evident prejudiced apprach justifies the headline I chose.

Let´s isolate this incident from war of civilizations. Let us blame institutions or people for what they do or what they don´t do. I hope the Norwegian government investigates this and makes a satisfying explanation. I also hope they train their emergency personnel to handle inquiries from foreigners properly. 

I think who ever has made the choice to be a professional emergency service worker has the bulk of responsibility.  In the US even if you just call, service comes via the ability to know the exact location via the phone system.  Nothing needs to be said, even cats and dogs have been trained to call.

If there is a human who can speak on the other end, the EMS phone person attempts to get as much information as possible, and give advice as what to do in that particular emergency.

Why anyone would ask any question about employment is beyond me.  Had the EMS gotten there in time, perhaps they could have helped the woman. I know a few people who were "dead" and revived by EMS.  Had they not gotten there in a timely manner, those people would never have been revived.   

Not just that they ask many other irrelevant questions like what your nationality is etc.

What I am objecting is the fact that everyone is assuming something about this family:

emergency service assumed there was no real emergency

the police assumed there is some sort of crime

the posters on this forum assume the family don´t know how to make a call and stuff like that.

We are driven by all these silly stereotypes. Many people on the Internet assume tons of laughable things about you when you begin to speak to them. They have a picture of a Turk = muslim = potential trouble in their minds. This last incident is a tragic example showing the gravity of the problem with stereotypes.

Empathy and sympathy are two concepts that can cure the present problem.  This is true for all countries not just Europe or the US. A prefered way to deal with problems involving other cultures must be sympathizing with their needs and trying to understand their motives. We do this even to animals. We try to establish empathy with a lion and base our relationship on the nature of this animal. When it comes to people, we resort to our stereotypes which effectively maims any interaction with individuals whose cultures and mindsets are different from ours.

It is terrible the mother died, however, I´m far from accusing Norway of racism. I understand that in a stressful situation it´s easy to blame everything on racism, but let´s be fair and wonder if that´s really the case.

As far as i know there are procedures all public services have to stick to, aren´t there? You may dislike the fact that a question of nationality is asked in an emergency situation, Vineyards, but there must be a reason or precedence to it. In Ireland, when you go to A&E, you´re asked what your religion is, and that´s regardless of your ethnicity. Don´t forget that people in the emergency services are just workers, not gods. They base their actions on the spoken report of the caller. If the caller´s language is bad, it´s pretty hard to blame them for not taking the right course of action. As for the police, Les said it´s a standard procedure when dealing with aggression. Again, hard to blame paramedics for wanting to be protected and safe.

It is saddening that incidents like that happen. But they don´t happen to foreigners only, how often do we hear about ambulance not being sent somewhere because the dispatcher made a wrong assumption or misjudged the situation?