Although, the article is a few months old, the only reason I liked it, is because it shows how social & economic inequality among the public is dangerous to us all.
Governments, especially Western ones, keep saying for the past couple decades that they are working hard to root out "terrorism". Whenever there are violent incidents, government officials issue statements with words like "unnecessary" & "senseless", & outline how they will root out the terrorism problem from their societies & the world. But the violence has only increased.
So, the common sense says that the root cause analyses done by these government officials' advisors are useless. One of the major root cause of modern terrorism is social & economic inequality, & hidden & open discrimination.
In one of my prior blog posts from last year (2015), the article mentioned was a Daily Mail article mentioning how Charlie Hebdo attackers were born-&-bred French citizens. Those attackers / "terrorists" grew up in Parisian suburbs, which are full of immigrants or even "foreign" citizens, & who are excluded from the economic development of France, Paris, & its general public. They have been left out in the metaphorical cold outside, while the Caucasian French natives are enjoying the fruits of immigrants' hard labour.
Now, those "foreign" citizens are from former French colonies & have been living in France for generations. But they are still considered as "foreigners". This similar problem has permeated other countries in EU; from Spain to UK to Belgium to Sweden. The root problem is still same, though; immigrants are welcomed wholeheartedly because they are discriminated against in the upper echelons of the labour market & they are only given hard labour jobs, at minimum wages & benefits, if any, while the natives of the country enjoy becoming rich on the backs of those immigrants.
As the professor of social science clearly explains in the article that these violent incidents in Sweden are not senseless but have major social problems like discrimination & high unemployment among immigrant families are their root causes. The unemployment rate for youths is about 25%, & most of those unemployed are “not Swedes.” He further affirms my points that “in the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & ... you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people.”
Problem is that Western governments & other non-Western governments will not solve the root cause of these violent incidents. Solving root causes will involve stop interfering with the internal sovereign matters of other developing countries, stop selling arms & weapons to developing countries, putting in policies in their own countries to judge every job applicant on merit & not on personal & professional networks, & end discrimination in labour market & education. Some of these are much easier to do but unachievable because it will hurt them economically. Some others are much harder to do, perhaps impossible, because human nature cannot be changed (we like people who are like us & hence, we readily will help them).
But if Western governments want these violent incidents to stop, then they have to take the first steps to carefully examine themselves & correct their own actions first. We can't blame others for their actions until we take a hard look at ourselves & correct our own actions first. Why give an excuse to others to harm us?
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On Sunday, the southern Swedish city of Malmo saw the fourth grenade attack in under a week as the a hand grenade was detonated in a car park in the district of Värnhem in the morning, local media reported.
The attack came after a blast on Friday in the Solbacken neighborhood, which occurred less than 12 hours after another explosion in the residential area of Limhamn in the west, & 2 days after a car bomb attack that injured a man outside a community center in the south.
“It is the thirtieth explosive attack since the New Year. We have a situation that is serious,” said the Malmö police chief, Stefan Sintéus, about the explosion on Friday, as quoted by the Local.se on Saturday.
...
This week’s unrest continues a series of numerous shootings, explosions & arsons that have occurred since the beginning of the year in Malmo, infamous for high crime rates, multi-ethnic & gang-related violence.
Since the beginning of 2015, 18 explosions rocked the city prompting the Swedish police's national bomb squad (NSB) to be called in. Over the whole 2014 a total of 25 explosions took place which shows a significant increase, Goran Mansson, head of NSB Malmo, told regional newspaper Sydsvenskan on Friday.
Police said they believe this week’s explosions are linked with the court sentencing of 3 young men on July 10 for their roles in the Christmas Eve bombing in Rosengard – the city district which has been dubbed by media as Sweden’s “most notorious refugee ghetto.” The Financial Times reported that 9 out of 10 in Rosengard have a foreign background.
...
Rosengard, a district in Malmo, was built in the 1960s & has long been associated with immigrants. Over 80% of residents there are immigrants, hailing from the Middle East, Africa & Eastern Europe. Only 38% of residents in the district are employed, according to the Economist, prompting restive youth to take to rioting & crime.
...
Forstell told RT that there are 30 to 40 people with criminal background & weapons in the city. He explained that criminal activity is connected with internal conflicts between different gangs or ethnic groups.
“Some of these people are involved in selling drugs and some of them are in other kinds of economic relations with each other and are not happy with the way things work out. It’s more of a business-like conflict,” he said.
According to statistics provided by local authorities, 31% of the city’s 300,000 population were born abroad & nearly 41% of the residents have a foreign background. The main countries from which immigration takes place are ones which have been recently plagued by conflicts – migrant groups from Iraq, Syria, the former Yugoslavia & Somalia are among them. The data also says that the Muslim population constitutes about 20% of Malmo’s population; this is one of the most significant percentages in Scandinavian cities.
Adrian Groglopo, professor of social science at the University of Gothenburg said that the conflicts are fueled by racial & economic tensions.
“People growing up in different areas segregated racially and economically are trying to keep their own business, protect their own areas and sometimes create a very violent climate,” he told RT.
...
Groglopo believes that the young population is being hit the hardest by the “racism and segregation in Sweden.”
“We have living conditions which are not good for the youth, that’s one of the problems,” he explains.
He also pointed to the problem of unemployment in Sweden which is “about 8-9 percent and for young people it’s about 25 percent.” He stressed that one of the main problems is ethnic discrimination in the labor market as most of the unemployed are “not Swedes.”
“In the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & of course it has racial connotations – you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people,” he added.
He urged the Swedish government to implement political measures for non-discrimination. There have been controversial incidents involving security forces & refugees ... .
...
“Sweden is going through political period very complex and bad,” Groglopo said. “We [are witnessing] a raise of fascism and Nazism in Sweden…they are getting political power.”
...
That headline may give a thought that this news is about police brutality & racism in US, but you would be wrong. This news is about Portugal.
So, if Europeans are thinking that "our European societies have grown out of such uninfluential & petty social issues as racism", then they would be very wrong.
Similar to the people saying, in regards to the police brutality & hate crimes against African-Americans in US, that American society is still very much racially divided, Europe is also still very racially divided. Over the years, I have read news how young black soccer / football players are discriminated against in Italy, or how Russian & Italian professional football matches are marred by racist chants & slogans, or how African migrants are treated badly in Scandinavian countries, or immigrants are treated badly in France (Paris) or the London riots etc.
We recently saw how African migrants are abused & hated in Europe, when they are trying to flee their war-ravaged homes in Middle East & Africa. Even though, those wars are the handiwork of Europeans themselves, by selling billions of weapons to the known corrupt governments of those conflict regions.
So, instead of successfully integrating these migrants in their societies, European countries are essentially rejecting these migrants & making them feel like that they are not wanted in their countries, by treating them "like animals".
So, as the world is seemingly becoming "modern," we, humans are moving backwards in our thinking of other human beings, & social diseases like hatred, racism, violence, & geopolitical conflicts are increasing on a daily basis.
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Jailza Sousa's young son is afraid when she hangs out the washing on their first-floor balcony.
"He's traumatised," says the 29-year-old from Cape Verde. "He says, 'Don't go there because you're going to get shot.'"
Looking down the narrow, potholed streets, she remembers what happened one day in February, earlier this year.
It was noon in Cova da Moura - a ramshackle suburb on a hill on the outskirts of Lisbon built by immigrants from Portugal's former African colonies.
It's a colourful, friendly place by day, but it has a reputation for drugs, crime & violence. It's a place that taxi drivers refuse to go at night.
On 5 February, a team of police officers had a young man called Bruno up against a wall. They were searching him & started beating him - his blood stained the wall & street for several days afterwards. Bystanders started protesting, & the police reacted with shotguns loaded with rubber buckshot.
"They treat us like animals," Sousa says of the police. "It's a black neighbourhood - they treat us like we're all here to be exterminated."
Sousa was taken to hospital while 2 people who work for a local human rights organisation, Moinho de Juventude, or Mill of Youth, set off for the police station to find out what had happened to Bruno.
The two men, Flavio Almada & Celso Lopes, were accompanied by about 5 other young men who had witnessed the incident.
When they arrived at the police station, they say 3 police officers were blocking the entrance.
"Suddenly about 15 or 20 cops came with sticks, with shotguns, & started trying to kick & punch us, trying to hit us with batons," says Lopes.
"And I said 'OK, I'm leaving,'" claims Almada. But he says one police officer cocked his shotgun. "And quickly, he shoot."
Lopes was hit in the leg by rubber buckshot. He, Almada & 3 others were then taken inside the police station, where they were handcuffed. They allege the beatings continued accompanied by extreme racist abuse.
Almada says one officer told him, "You don't know how much I hate you. If I had the power, you would all be exterminated."
He says he was terrified. "I will never forget his face. I will never forget his words."
The men claim other police officers told them they should join Islamic State.
Lopes says for 5 hours they received no medical attention. Eventually all 5 men were admitted to hospital.
Almada says he suffers from terrible nightmares & some of the injuries have still not healed.
4 separate investigations are underway into what happened. Both the Interior Ministry & Portugal's racial discrimination commission are investigating the conduct of the police.
Almada, Lopes & their friends face charges of invading the police station, & they in turn are pressing their own charges of torture & racism against the police.
"When the police come the police are the law," says Lopes. "You are no longer living in a democracy, you are living in a police state."
At the time, the media reported that Bruno had thrown a rock at a police van, breaking a window & injuring an officer. Bruno & eyewitnesses deny this.
It was also reported that the men had tried to storm the police station & that the 5 who were detained had suffered "minor" injuries after resisting arrest. There were later reports that a police officer was taken to hospital with a broken arm.
This incident re-ignited long standing claims of police brutality & racism - a story told in the graffiti on Cova da Moura's walls.
A video circulating on social media shows another recent police raid in Cova da Moura which was filmed by a resident. In the early hours of the morning, police with shotguns & wearing balaclavas can be seen walking through the streets, & shots can be heard.
These police are part of what's known as a Rapid Intervention Team - highly trained & heavily equipped, & normally only called in when a situation escalates beyond what the regular police can handle. But Almada says they are a common sight.
He introduces me to Whassysa Magalhaes, a teacher & part of the management of Moinho de Juventude. One day the police stopped her and asked for her ID.
"I was late & said I had to go to university & they said, 'Black people study?'" she recalls, adding that they used a derogatory term for black people.
Others tell stories of being called monkeys or having their ID cards destroyed by police.
"Here, police just ask you to stop & if you don't stop or you ignore them, they shoot at you, start kicking you, hitting you with sticks," says one young man, Fabio.
"They hate black people."
In another part of Lisbon, Quinta da Lage, the side of one house is painted with a mural of a young black man, & the words "RIP Kuku, let justice be done."
The house belongs to Domingas Sanches. In 2009, her 14-year-old son Elson, also known as Kuku, was driving with friends in a stolen car when they were stopped by police. They started to run away, but Elson was caught by one of the officers. He managed to break away, & was then shot in the head at point blank range by the policeman.
"It's difficult but life goes on, sometimes I cry, I miss him," says Sanches.
The policeman was tried for gross negligent manslaughter & acquitted after claiming he heard a sound like a pistol being cocked, & saw a metallic object in Elson's hand. A weapon was recovered at the scene, although Elson's defenders say it had no fingerprints on it & claim it was planted.
"I felt a great disgust," says Sanches. "If it were a 14-year-old kid killing a policeman, then someone would be found responsible."
"The only thing I wanted was that justice be done, but it probably won't be."
This sense of injustice is widespread. Activists claim that 14 young black men have been killed by police since 2001, & that no police officers have been held responsible for those deaths, though the numbers include some deaths where police responsibility is disputed.
One person who remembers the first of those shootings is Lieve Meersschaert. Born in Belgium she came to Cova da Moura in the early 80s where she co-founded Moinho de Juventude, the organisation that Almada & Lopes work for.
In 2001 a police officer killed a man by shooting him in the back, she says, prompting an escalation of violence.
Eventually Moinho arranged a dinner for local police commanders to meet young people from the neighbourhood - including the sister of the man who was shot.
"It was very funny when the 35 police station commanders arrived, they didn't want to come in. And afterwards we almost had to kick them out, because they didn't want to leave," she says.
After that meeting the police commander of the local area, Antonio Manuel Pereira, worked on improving relations between police & residents. They held football tournaments & children spent time with the officers.
But Pereira retired in 2012 & his replacement put less emphasis on community policing, says Meersschaert. Around the same time a pilot programme called the Critical Neighbourhoods Initiative, which promoted closer co-operation between police & residents, was cancelled by the newly elected conservative government.
Meersschaert says brutality has got worse since then, & that the government ignored warnings.
The BBC made several requests for interviews to the Interior Ministry & the Prime Minister's office, which were all turned down. Eventually the Ministry provided a statement about the police, referred to here as the PSP.
"We reject the suggestion of the existence of police violence & racism. Community policing was, & will continue to be the basis for the deployment of police resources, with a view to ensuring the safety of people & property & to prevent crime. [Community policing] has never been abandoned by the PSP, either in Cova da Moura or in any sensitive urban area. On the contrary, the PSP carries out, on average, more than 15,000 community or neighbourhood policing operations a year, & in sensitive urban areas, interventions of this nature have been increasing. It is not correct to establish a correlation between the reduction of police officers in recent years & purely economic measures."
Almada feels that the problems in Cova da Moura come from a deeper attitude in Portuguese society.
"Racism is beyond the police, it's the whole frame of society, it's a big issue & I don't believe they want to change all these things," he says. "If you see Portugal receiving a prize for well integrated immigrants it's a big lie."
But Portugal's High Commissioner for Migration, Pedro Calado disagrees. "We don't have this big problem of racism in our society," he says.
Calado - the head of the government body tasked with promoting integration, & dealing with racial discrimination - points to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). This global study ranks countries according to how successfully they integrate migrants. Portugal currently comes second, behind Sweden.
Portugal's defenders also point out that it hasn't had riots like London or Paris, & that there's little anti-immigrant political rhetoric in Portugal.
"I have this clear perception that what happened in Cova da Moura is not the general situation of the country. This was an exception," says Calado.
He also oversees Portugal's Commission for Equality & Against Racial Discrimination, which handles racial discrimination complaints.
"We don't have many complaints," he says as he shows me a report containing the data. It indicates that from 2005-13, there were 75 complaints against the security forces.
I ask how many of those complaints were upheld.
"We would have to look at the data," says Calado. "I cannot tell."
Despite several weeks of emailing back & forth after our interview, the High Commission wouldn't tell me the number of complaints upheld against the security forces for racial discrimination. They say they lack the resources to process the data.
But piecing together the data that is available, it seems that fewer than 10 racism complaints against the security forces have been upheld in the past 10 years in the whole of Portugal. In places such as Cova da Moura, this is seen as evidence of a broken system which doesn't hold police accountable.
Although Portuguese officials deny a deep, systemic problem with the police, the recent incident involving Almada and Lopes has led to some changes.
The Interior Ministry met people from neighbourhood organisations, including Moinho de Juventude & promised to set up a new Early Warning Commission to avoid conflict.
Almada says he hopes that what happened to him might make a small difference, but he's cautious.
"I want to see the results," he says. "I'm like that guy the disciple of Jesus, I just want to see."
Liked the op-ed piece. A woman in the western world may get into prostitution business, willingly, but mostly, through coercion & sex slavery (human trafficking) & stay in the business, thinking she has no other choice.
A business / industry only thrives for as long as there's demand & supply. Prostitution or sex work is such a lucrative business that there's always demand for it, & hence, there will always be supply, which in turn, hurts women, since it involves human trafficking.
If you curb the demand somehow, supply will dry up by itself, since a human trafficker will take his product (women) to markets where there's enough demand to make him/her enough money.
So, what Sweden did is commendable, but it won't solve the problem completely. It may, in fact, drive the problem underground in some places, where chances of sexual abuse is even more. Some may say that Swedish demand went to Denmark or any number of poorer Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia etc). In the end, women are abused a lot in this business, from East to West, & from North to South. And there is no consensus of which method works best to completely rid of this world of prostitution.
To completely end this business of prostitution & related human trafficking business, a society needs religion where people know that there are no loopholes to get out of their vices. That society also needs a lot of other things to do to keep women safe, & build a thriving & strong society, centered around family & its values.
On a side note, it's funny usually how people say that this is a modern world & we humans have evolved now. How is it modern? Prostitution is considered one of the oldest profession (or more correctly, business). So how is it that we humans of 21st century have become modern when one of the worst business of yore is still thriving today, at the expense of dignity, respect, & life of other half of the humankind (i.e. woman)?
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Here in Canada, most progressive people hold an enlightened view of prostitution. Since fighting it is futile, we ought to legalize & regulate it. Legalizing prostitution would destigmatize sex-trade workers & increase their safety.
Sweden went another way. In 1999, it passed a law to criminalize the buyers of sex, but not the sellers. Sex-trade workers were encouraged to report abusive clients to police, & given assistance to help them find other lines of work. (Or, in the case of migrant women who’d been trafficked, to return home.) The law is not unlike Canada’s new law, which has been widely derided as unworkable, unconstitutional, dangerous to women & hopelessly reactionary. But then nobody ever accused the Harper government of being progressive.
So how are things going in Sweden? Pretty well, it turns out. Last week, a thick report published by a government agency in Stockholm found that street prostitution has been cut by more than half since 1995. Other studies also indicate that the sex trade has shrunk substantially.
In Stockholm’s red-light district, “there’s hardly anyone there,” says political science professor Max Waltman, an expert in prostitution policy at the University of Stockholm who spoke to me by telephone. Nor is it true that the street trade has simply moved indoors. Prof. Waltman estimates that the total number of sex workers in the country has dropped from 3,000 in the mid-1990s to about 600 in recent years.
At first, public opinion over the new law was sharply divided. Its biggest support came from the greens, the feminists & others in the left-left wing. But today, it has overwhelming public support. Many Swedes view prostitution not as a choice or a moral offence, but a form of male violence against women. They compare it to serial rape & slavery. Last year, when Amnesty International said it planned to lobby for legalization, Swedish women’s rights organizations were outraged.
Nadine Bergquist is a volunteer with Rosenlundstodet, a small group of women who help get prostitutes off the streets. “We think it’s a great law, very necessary, crucial,” she told me. “The women who’ve left prostitution say that without this law, it would have been very much harder for them.” She dismisses the notion that the law stigmatizes them. “They were stigmatized already.”
Across the bridge from southern Sweden is Denmark, which chose to go the other way & decriminalize prostitution. The two countries form a sort of natural policy experiment. By 2007, according to Prof. Waltman, Denmark had about 15 times more prostitutes per capita than Sweden did – many of them migrant women trafficked from Romania & Nigeria. Now that Sweden is a hostile climate for traffickers, they tend to stick to more lucrative countries.
Iceland & Norway – two other progressive, feminist, northern countries – have adopted the Swedish model. But in Canada, the ideologies are flipped. Here, conservatives applaud the Swedish model, while progressives, academics, feminists & the media overwhelmingly ridicule it.
Prof. Waltman, who has been following Canada’s debate closely, thinks these people are seriously wrong. Decriminalization is a failed experiment, he argues. “When the German parliament decided at the end of the nineties to decriminalize, the idea was to make prostitution safer. Women would sign onto social security, & they would be destigmatized, & they would work in brothels & be safe.”
But no one signed up for social security, the sex trade was not destigmatized & brothels, he says, are not particularly safe. Worst of all, prostitution has exploded. “Most women are obviously not doing it by choice,” he says. “Most of them have been profoundly traumatized & want to get out. If you legalize it, it’s legalizing slavery, because they have no real choice.”
That’s the argument that sticks with me. I honestly don’t care if Terri-Jean Bedford operates her house of pain out of her nice suburban bungalow. Most sex workers aren’t her. Nor are they strapped co-eds working toward their masters’ degrees. They’re women at the bottom of the heap, too often aboriginal, who’ve been badly damaged & believe they have no other options.
As Ms. Bergquist says, “Anyone who believes there is such a thing as a happy prostitute should walk down the street with us one night & look these women in the eye. And then I’d like to see if they still believe that’s true.”
As I have blogged before with the story about French ghettos of immigrants & their children who feel marginalized, & are ready to follow anyone who make them feel like family & falsely promise a future, for committing violence, in return. Sweden is also going through the similar problem.
Primary problem is once again marginalization of immigrant youths from the mainstream society. Be it North American or Western Europe or Northern Europe countries, immigrants are welcome with both arms, but they are made to feel second class citizens. Older immigrants accept their fate. But the young ones, who are growing up with their mainstream / indigenous friends start to see the discrimination when they see their friends moving onwards & upwards, & those kids of immigrant backgrounds feel left behind.
The main reason is that they were always come to expect that their new homes are in fair & just societies. But then the ugly head of discrimination rears up, which is very much rampant in these societies. They see the garbage hiding under the nice carpet. Some immigrant youths drink the Kool-Aid & will vehemently oppose any such idea that there is any discrimination in their new homes, but most don't.
Those youths then either suffer silently & become mentally & physically ill, or they hit back. Violence is never the answer to resolve these problems, but then problems cannot be solved from merely saying nice words to immigrants, either.
These problems, which will only going to get worse, since more & more immigrants are flowing in North American & European countries, can only be solved in 2 ways:
1. North American & European countries completely ban the sale of any & all arms & weapons sales to corrupt, authoritarian, & developing countries in Africa & Asia. A blanket ban on all such sales, no ifs & buts.
The immigrant wave will start to abate by itself, since their corrupt governments don't have weapons to kill innocent civilians.
2. Whatever immigrant populations are already in their countries, help them integrating through objective, merit-based qualification process; be it for education or jobs etc. Abolish the practice of networking. That will in itself help diversify the talent pool & the economy will improve. Immigrant youths will see a bright future that if they work hard, they will achieve something in the mainstream society, instead of working hard & achieving something in a gang or radical religious group.
These suggestions are simple & will only help the North American & European societies. The question is are the leaders willing to take such steps, since arms sales increase GDP & exports of the country, & immigrant populations create a silent 2nd class of people who will do the dirty jobs, while nice cushy jobs to the indigenous population.
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As drinkers watched the final minutes of the Barcelona versus Manchester City football match in the Vår bar in Gothenburg on Wednesday night, all hell broke loose. Two masked men opened fire with automatic weapons, killing 2 & injuring a dozen more.
Petar Petrovic, 20, a Swede of Serbian origin, died in the storm of bullets. A DJ at the bar, he was due to start university in London this year.
The other dead man, aged 25, was a leading figure in a local gang, the Vårvädersligan, named after the square where the shootings took place. With a string of convictions, including drug offences, he had only recently left jail, according to press reports.
Sweden has been shocked by the barbarity & indiscriminate nature of the Gothenburg shootings. Gang violence has featured occasionally in local news, but this was the first time an innocent bystander had been killed. Regional police chief Klas Friberg called it a “heartless attack with no human feeling”.
The tragedy has also shone a spotlight on a hidden aspect of Swedish society that reads like the sub-plot of a Stieg Larsson novel, in which poverty, racism & segregation are driving young men from immigrant backgrounds into gangs & gun crime.
A few days before the shooting, police had arrested another member of the gang after he was observed in a railway station handing over a shoebox stuffed with 500,000 krona (£39,000). A third figure in the gang had left the Vår bar shortly before the shooting took place.
The killings broke a 9-month period of relative calm in Gothenburg. After a double murder in early 2013, police poured resources into Biskopsgården, the deprived borough where Wednesday’s killings took place, which has high levels of recent immigration & overcrowding. Entitled operation Safe Gothenburg, the police targeted 9 gangs across the city involved in turf wars over drugs, weapons & contraband.
... After 57 shooting incidents & 8 fatalities in 2013, there were 4 deaths last year, while arrests led to the jailing of key gang leaders. The trend seemed to be clear.
In December, a dozen members of the Bergsjö gang were jailed & only last month, the leader of Bulls motorcycle gang started a 10-year sentence for violence. He had an earlier conviction for “crucifying” a man by strapping his wrists to a plank & leaving him hanging.
However, fears of a flare-up of gang crime lingered when the leader of the Bandidos gang was released from jail last summer after a 7-year sentence for a bomb attack.
“We have groups that are really marginalised, cut off from mainstream society, dropouts with no work,” says Sven-Åke Lindgren, professor of sociology at Gothenburg university who last year authored a report on gang crime. He sees Wednesday’s attack as a show of power in a battle for supremacy between gangs.
“These are ‘radical losers’, more desperate, more angry & frustrated, who are prepared to use weapons & violence that is really shocking to Swedish society, to compensate for their loss of status,” Prof Lindgren said.
Gang crime is not confined to Gothenburg – 22 Swedish cities are affected, said Magnus Lindgren of the Safer Sweden Foundation. This is a “new Sweden”, he said, which means new methods of crime fighting are needed.
I love this area, but we have a problem with young people feeling they can’t share the aspirations of the majority.
“The main problem is the Swedish model of crime prevention which dates from the 1960s, trying to build a good society with good education & child care. That’s all very well, but we are fighting the crimes of yesterday, not necessarily the crimes of today or tomorrow.”
Friberg, the police chief, said police were working “to do as much harm to the individual criminals as we can” while trying to halt the trade in illegal weapons. Interior minister Anders Ygeman called for a doubling of sentences for gun crime.
... There was also a sense of fear – the library was quiet because parents had kept their children at home, locals said.
“This is a ghetto,” said Nora, 25, who was born of Saudi parents who moved to Biskopsgården when she was just a few months old. “There is racism & young people can’t get jobs; they feel they have no future in Swedish society.”
Now studying to be a nurse, she is worried what may happen to her brother, aged 10, when he gets a little older. “The gangs make boys feel like family, they look after them,” she said. She wants her brother to go to a school outside the borough where there is no drug dealing.
Katarina Despotovic, a researcher who has chronicled what she calls the neglect of boroughs such as Biskopsgården, said Gothenburg was concentrating resources in the city centre, creating suburban satellites “that no one cares about”.
“I love this area & its people, but we have a problem with young people feeling they can’t share the dreams & aspirations of the majority,” said Ulrika Stöök, 45, who works for the local council in Biskopsgården.
“We need to give young people hope. We can do a few things locally but now we need help.”
