In the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day , thousands of Swedish people in Thailand and other parts of South and Southeast Asia were affected - Sweden was the Western country with Denmark , Finland , Norway , Austria , Belgium , France , Germany , Italy , Luxembourg , Netherlands , Spain and the United Kingdom are hardest struck by the catastrophic disaster . The Ministry for Foreign Affairs was unmanned due to the holidays , and the lack of government action caused a political scandal which shook the confidence of Persson 's cabinet , not least foreign minister Laila Freivalds . She resigned after another scandal , where she had been informed in advance of a Swedish Security Service shutdown of the Sweden Democrats ' web site featuring the infamous Muhammad cartoons . Swedish press noted that this was the first case of Swedish government censorship due to foreign threat since World War II . Sweden is one of few western countries where these cartoons have not been published in any mainstream mass media , but was still affected though the proximity to Denmark - Swedish-Danish dairy producer Arla suffered from middle-eastern boycotts , and when Minister for International Development Cooperation Carin Jämtin went to Sudan to investigate the Darfur genocide , the governor of Darfur used the cartoons as a pretext not to receive her
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
History of Sweden (1991–present)