SOS Rasisme is a Norwegian activist organisation, whose stated goal is to reduce racism in society. It was founded in 1985, inspired by the French SOS Racisme. The first years the organization was a part of Antirastisk center, another anti-racist organization, but in the early 1990s it became independent.
SOS Rasisme was co-founded by Kristin Halvorsen, who later became Minister of Finances from 2005 to 2009. It reports to be Europe's largest anti-racist member organization, with more than 40 000 members. It is a democratic organization, with new leadership elected every two years. Current leader is Trond Thorbjørnsen, re-elected at the organizations 11.th National Assembly in 2008. SOS Rasisme claims to have more than 270 local chapters all over Norway.
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On January 16, 2006, the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv claimed that SOS Rasisme was dominated and influenced by people on the far left in Norwegian politics, and questioned whether the large number of members was actually correct or a falsification. SOS Rasisme denies all claims that their membership numbers are false[1].
On September 9, 2009, Norwegian radio station P4 ran a story claiming that five of the leaders of SOS Rasisme are also high-ranking members of a revolutionary Communist organisation called Tjen Folket. P4 quotes Khalid Salimi, the founder of SOS Rasisme, as saying he was ousted from the organisation by the communists, and that SOS Rasisme is currently run almost exclusively by white Norwegian communists. Salimi estimates that there are actually more "black" people in the Progress Party, a Norwegian political party with an immigration sceptic agenda, than in SOS Rasisme. [2]
On March 1, 2010, Landsrådet for Norges Barne- og ungdomsorganisasjoner (Public council for Norwegian child and youth organisations) announced that they were withdrawing public funding given to SOS Rasisme. The reason was that the number of members and local chapters reported by SOS Rasisme seemed to be incorrect, and they were in doubt about whether the money to the organization was going out to the local chapters. It was uncovered that SOS Rasisme had used the money to buy real estate by channeling state grants through a company called Aktivisteiendom AS (Activist Property). It was also uncovered that SOS Rasisme offered a so-called "family membership", where members could enroll members of their family into SOS Rasisme simply by stating their first name, without any documentation that the family members in question even existed or were willing to join the organisation. Government funding of SOS Rasisme was based on the total number of members. The treasurer of SOS Rasisme, Kjell Gunnar Larsen, denies any wrongdoing, and claims that the probe carried out by LNU is part of an organised campaign by far-right groups. [3][4][5][6][7]
In October 2009, the firm KPMG carried out an audit of SOS Rasisme's membership lists in three norwegian cities. The investigation found that about half of the people on the membership list, which was used as a basis for calculating public funding, denied being members of SOS Rasisme. The report also found several instances of infants younger than one year of age being signed up as members by older family members.[8]