2023-12-14 08:13:01
The shootings and attacks with explosives by criminal groups that have been hitting Sweden’s largest cities have spread to the country’s outskirts and quieter towns.
The advance of crime has destroyed the reputation of a nation that was considered safe and peaceful. Half an hour from central Stockholm is the town of Upplands-Bro, a place with lakeside yacht clubs, reddish wooden villages and apartments surrounded by pine and spruce trees.
But last August, a 14-year-old boy was found dead in a forest. Since January, there have been several shootings and attacks with explosives against some houses and apartments in the area. “It is awful. The explosions woke us up. It’s scary,” says Anna Petterson, 42, who lives in Bro and has three children. “It’s something we’re aware of, something we talk about a lot. We are afraid”.
For several years now, Sweden has been a European hotspot for shootings and attacks related to criminal gangs. But the violence of late has moved beyond vulnerable, low-income urban areas.
Police say one reason is that gang members are increasingly attacking their rivals’ relatives. Detectives suspect that some of the latest violence has been organized by criminal leaders based in other countries, such as Turkey and Serbia.
The expansion of crime
So far this year, more than 50 people have died in shootings and more than 140 explosions have occurred in the Nordic country. Last year, more than 60 people died from gun violence, the highest number on record.
“What began as armed violence between gangs of young criminals seeking to defend their territory has become a vicious cycle of firearms trafficking and armed violence,” explains Nils Duquet, a firearms researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute in Brussels. .
“The gangs have also grown and are no longer just street criminals, but they are also connected to higher level criminals”. Among the dead are also innocent people who were passing by on the street.
In September, a 70-year-old man and a 20-year-old man were killed in a shooting at a bar in Sandviken, central Sweden, and a 24-year-old recently graduated teacher died in an explosion on the outskirts of the university town. from Uppsala.
More than 60 people died in 2022 due to armed violence in Sweden.getty
Shortly after, the Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristerssongave an unusual national speech in which he admitted that “no other country in Europe” is experiencing this type of situation and promised toughen penalties for deadly violence.
Evin Cetin, an author and attorney who has represented teenage victims and suspects in shootings, says gangs recruit children as young as 13 or 14 often with promises of money and designer clothes through social media.
“Children use their own bags, not to carry books, but to carry the illegal drug market in Sweden on their backs,” he explains to the BBC Cetin on a visit to Upplands-Bro as part of a tour of schools in more than a dozen crime-affected areas.
Others try to tackle the problem by organizing street patrols in areas affected by drugs and violence. “Walking out and chatting with our children increases safety,” says Libaane Warsame during an evening walk in Jarva, north of Stockholm, on a wet and windy Friday night.
Jarva looks like many Swedish suburbs, with well-maintained apartment blocks, a few shops and a nearby forest. The main difference is that it is more multicultural than many other neighborhoods and has the highest unemployment rate in Stockholm.
Neighborhood patrols
Warsame began patrolling the streets after his 19-year-old son – who police said did not belong to any gang – was killed in a shooting in December 2020. “It’s hard [para los jóvenes] sitting at home for hours with no income, no job. “Then they go out and stand around, which puts them at great risk of being recruited.”
Warsame also runs an organization supporting families who have lost loved ones in violence. This year there have been no fatal shootings in Jarva, but many residents of that town say they are very concerned about what is happening in the area.
Libaane Warsame (left) is a member of the neighborhood patrols that watch the streets at night.getty
“I don’t usually go out so late… because I don’t want to worry my mom,” says 17-year-old Gizem Kuzucu. Gizem, who usually spends her afternoons studying at the Framtidens Hus youth center, says that none of her friends have had any problems with the law. But she has been exposed to the effects of crime on social networks.
“I have seen many videos on TikTok in which people are talking about acts of violence. It’s like they’re saying, ‘follow me on Instagram, I’m going to post that a rapper was killed.'” Another teen at the youth center, Libaan, says he grew up around older criminals and that he “committed some crimes” when he was younger.
“The kids here are very mean to each other… they don’t know how to talk about their emotions, instead what they do is attack you,” says the 18-year-old.
“Lack of integration”
The Swedish police do not have a map of nationalities of gang members, but a 2021 investigation by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that young people born in Sweden to foreign parents were overrepresented as suspects in murder and robbery cases.
The right-wing coalition government, elected in September 2022, believes that the increase in gang violence in recent years is directly related to previous ones Sweden immigration policies.
Until 2016, Sweden had one of the most generous asylum laws in Europe. “Now we see that ‘foreignization’ and lack of integration, in combination with narcotics trafficking and organized crime, are creating this very toxic mix,” declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tobias Billstromto the BBC in September.
Libaan (left) says he feels excluded from Swedish society.getty
The government wants to complicate the access of non-EU immigrants to social services and seeks to make preschool education mandatory for children with two foreign parents, in order to improve knowledge of the Swedish language.
At the beginning of the year, it was criminalized recruitment of minors to engage in criminal activities. The government announced that in 2024 they will seek to put into operation control zones and double prison sentences for serious crimes, such as crimes with firearms and explosions.
To the BBC He was not granted an interview with the government to discuss these plans, despite multiple requests.
Researcher Klara Hradilova-Selin, from the state-run Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, believes that the fight against gang crime “should have become an issue to be addressed sooner.” The researcher refers to the responsibility of previous coalitions, both right and left, in controlling the advance of crime.
“There are colleagues of mine who warned decades ago [sobre] this type of development of the growing marginalization in disadvantaged areas.” Concern is also growing about the country’s international image.
“Sweden has always been considered an extremely safe country. Perhaps one of the safest countries in the world. This image is falling apart”, says Hradilova-Selin.
Conocé The Trust Project
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