Sweden changes course – joins East Europeans: police speak of ‘threat to the system’

At that time, the country accepted 163,000 of them (twice per capita than Germany) and was proud of such a generous policy.

And it was this fall, when the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos was demolished by migrants, the same Prime Minister, Löfven, promised to help economically the migrants concentrated in the Greek islands, but refused to accept at least one of them. .

Sweden has joined the Eastern Europeans with a tough immigration policy, the German media were surprised to ask what had happened to the Swedes, those pioneers of openness to immigration. After all, it is not the right wing in government, but the coalition of Social Democrats and Greens!

Life, as you can see, has been forced to change course by shootings and explosions by migrant gangs in Swedish cities. Mats Löfving, the country’s deputy police chief, even spoke on the country’s television about the “threat to the system.” All this inevitably changes the discourse in the country, on October 1. wrote the left-wing German daily Frankfurter Rundschau.

A similar number of bombings occur in Afghanistan alone

This year alone, 27 people were killed in shootings against migrant gangs in Sweden, almost all members of criminal gangs. But from time to time, the country is also shaken by the tragic deaths of innocent people. Here, in early August, a twelve-year-old girl was killed in an accidental gang shooting in the Botkirk area south of Stockholm.

And last year, as well as in August, two masked men in the middle of the Malmö street shot a 31-year-old woman with a two-month-old baby in her arms, as the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet wrote at the time for murdering her in a case. hospitable as a hospital doctor. testify against a gang member.

It has been several years since the gangs took the bombs to intimidate or blackmail. Not a week goes by before a bomb explodes anywhere in Swedish cities, Anders Thornberg, head of the national police, complained last fall.

“There is nothing like this at the international level”, understands the anxiety of the population, especially when the wave of violence spills from abandoned urban areas to the neighborhoods of the average citizen.

“There is an impression that retaliatory campaigns are closing in on public life,” Thornberg said.

And Henrik Häggström, an expert from the Swedish Defense University, said in an interview with TV4 that a similar number of explosions, relative to the country’s population, existed in non-war zones only in Afghanistan.

Police efforts remain unsuccessful for now

2019 In Sweden, 200 gang shootings were recorded with 26 killed and 68 injured. 2018 there were 310 of those shootings and 45 deaths.

The criminal gangs competing in the drug trade are so stagnant that as of August this year, Gothenburg, the second-largest city, a quarter inhabited primarily by immigrants, had even started blocking roads and stopping cars. Due to gang conflicts, medical offices in the northern part of the city refused to visit their homes to protect their staff, the local newspaper Göteborgs-Posten wrote.

Clan violence is increasing in Sweden, and police efforts to combat gang crime are not bearing fruit.

Crime detection rates are very low, and the police simply cannot infiltrate this organized crime environment because of a “code of silence” among gang members, Gunnar Appelgren, an expert on gang crime, told Afteposten.

And although the Swedish media does not write about the ethnic origin of the criminals, according to Appelgren, most of them grew up in families of newcomers and belong to the second or even the third generation of immigrants.

According to Swedish sociologist Göran Adamson, in 2017, 58 percent of all suspected criminals were immigrants or people raised in immigrant families. There are now 61 neighborhoods in the country, classified as “dangerous” or “very dangerous” by the police.

The high official’s words sounded like a bomb blast.

“We currently have at least 40 criminal networks based on family structures in Sweden, the so-called clans. I daresay they came to Sweden with a clear purpose, to carry out criminal activities here in an organized and systematic way,” said the deputy chief of police. Swede M. Löfving, who spoke about the growing influence of clans and the defenselessness of the police in a recent interview.

Such an open confession sounded like a bomb blast, the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted a senior Swedish official as saying.

They operate through violence, making money from drug trafficking, violent crime, blackmail, and extortion. Their crimes are different from traditional crimes in the country.

One person means nothing here. Even marriages are often contracted to strengthen clans. And children are raised by relatives and relatives as a future change that will have to take over the criminal structures they have created. These children do not even think about being part of Swedish society from an early age. Swedes are too naive if they expect that, Löfving explained.

The German media have also repeatedly reported in recent years on the structures of the immigrant clans that have formed in Berlin, Bremen and other major cities in the country. At the same time, however, there were still reassuring voices that the issue was being resolved to shape societal skepticism about liberal immigration policy. And, of course, it should not be forgotten that right-wing populists benefit from such languages.

Are the clan representatives already seated in the Town Hall?

Similar efforts were made to alleviate the problem by presenting information from Sweden. Frankfurter Rundschau, quoting a high-ranking Swedish police officer, noted here that it is natural for the police chief to be more competent in fighting crime. But was it not an exaggeration to say that clan crime in Sweden is already “threatening the system” when criminal networks are already seeking political power?

Doesn’t he dramatize by saying that clans are already influencing “high-level” and communal elections? When asked in a television studio if the clans are already sitting in the Reichstage in Stockholm, Löfving replied: “Our internal intelligence is investigating this. I can’t say more. “

The Swedish press reported that criminal clans had managed to infiltrate institutions such as the job market, insurance funds and municipalities. For example, a documentary series on the SVT television channel revealed mafia connections between the Social Democrats sitting in the Sigtuna City Hall and the Syrian Orthodox immigrant community, including obtaining the votes of immigrant voters for the Social Democrats.

Not even Sweden, 20th century. considered an exemplary social democratic state, would it have naively fallen into the trap of the mafia in the 21st century? ”Asked Thomas Borchert, author of the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Even a member of the famous group ABBA did not hate

Swedish patience seems to be on the wane.

“Swedes see themselves as calm and non-confrontational, qualities that are difficult to reconcile with the mentality of those young criminals whose parents came from the former Yugoslavia, East Africa, the Middle East and the Maghreb in the 1990s. They had to take stronger integration measures, then we would not have that gang problem now. At least that’s what the Swedes think about the situation in the country, “wrote the daily Die Welt.

Finally, even one of the members of the famous ABBA quartet, Björn Ulvaeus, did not hate: at the end of September, in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, he called for a change of attitude towards migrants and stricter laws, since gang crimes represent a growing threat to Swedish society.

You need to find a middle ground and do something to prevent criminals from entering credible institutions in the first place, Ulvaeus wrote.

The 75-year-old musician proposes changing the law on state and service secrets to make life as difficult as possible for criminal gangs.

“The crime of the clan shows that we must compromise integrity,” he said. Because the law, while fully protecting information about a person’s private life, unfortunately also creates “fantastic operating conditions for organized crime.”

It’s hard for Social Democrats to say goodbye to illusion

The problems with immigrant criminal networks are by no means new. A year and a half ago Rudolf Hermann, a correspondent for the Swiss daily Neuer Züricher Zeitung in Stockholm, wrote: “Sweden’s dream of integrating immigrants has failed. The safety of citizens in Swedish cities has become a hot political issue. “

Opposition leader, Moderata samlingspartiet leader Ulf Kristersson, had already spoken of an unprecedented gang demonstration when police cars were attacked, explosives were planted at police stations and a police officer’s apartment was shot. .

Political Stockholm has long denied the causal link between immigration and gang crime. But now even the Social Democrats acknowledge that the integration of immigrants has partially collapsed. In a television program, Jimmie Åkesson, president of the Swedish right-wing democrats, asked the prime minister, the social democrat Löfven, if he did not see a link between the influx of migrants and the increase in crime, he said: “tension, and that not good “.

And while it is still difficult for Löfven to speak openly about the consequences of failed integration, he has already promised to change migration policy and accept far fewer refugees under pressure from the right, according to Die Welt.

However, is integration possible when the mentality of the host society and immigrants, cultural and value orientations, attitudes towards society, the family and the individual are so fundamentally different? Newcomers want to integrate? This crucial issue is still being eluded. After all, without the desire (and ability) of immigrants to integrate, all government efforts will be in vain.

Sweden, like many other Western European countries, is slowly saying goodbye to the postmodern illusion of a heterogeneous and cohesive society.