When I got off the train
at Malmo's Central station last week and dragged my suitcase noisily over the
cobbled pavements I thought to myself, "There's no way this place has 'No
Go Zones'."
Downtown Malmo is a
gorgeous though freezing cold place to visit in February. I checked into my
hotel — passing between a "Burger King" and a "Schwarma
King" along the way, the latter of which recently took the spot of the
"Stortogets Gatukok" in Malmo's Great Square — and set off for my
destination: Rosengard.
Much has been written
about Sweden's "No Go Zones" in recent years. We've watched them burn
over the years with a combination of disbelief and shock. When the Sweden
Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson told me — as we walked through Molenbeek in Brussels
just days after the Paris terror attacks in 2015 — "we have these places
in Sweden too," I was skeptical.
Sweden is supposed to be
paradise-like, I thought. Isn't it all leggy blondes and Ikea and Abba and
lingonberries? Well if you stay downtown in Malmo or Stockholm, perhaps it is.
Even the elevator muzak had a whiff of "Fernando" about it.
But the stereotypes and
clichés, kept alive for the tourists no doubt, end when you leave the city
centres and head out to some of the suburbs.
My first stop was
Rosengard, where my colleague Oliver Lane first reported from in September 2015.
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Sweden's
liberal migration policies have led to ghettoised communities dependent on
state welfare.
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As we drove around the
housing estates at night, it became clear the problems in these areas: drugs,
rape, police assaults and more, were created in large part by state-sponsored
"multiculturalism."
Sweden's liberal
migration policies, that is to say a failure to maintain any sort of border
control at all over the past few decades, have led to ghettoised communities
that the state props up with generous welfare payments and socialist lecturing.
Sign posts on
noticeboards advertised for left wing political parties, and as we passed by a
mural of a mosque and parked up at the Herregarden housing estate, a couple of
girls we asked for directions signed off, "Good luck there!"
"Fantastic," I
thought.
It being below freezing
with a bitter wind, there were few people out of the streets. A few hijab-clad
women scurried between buildings, sometimes with children in tow. Not one would
speak to us, or look at us, at all.
"Maybe they don't
know what I'm saying in Swedish," my guide remarked.
And it would make sense
that they didn't. Some estimates put the population of Herregarden's housing estates
at 96 per cent foreign born or of foreign background.
A few men shuffled out
of a basement, again unwilling or unable to speak. I later came to find out
from a former police officer in the city that they were likely attending what
is referred to as a "cellar mosque" — an underground, basement place
of prayer and preaching often unknown to authorities.
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Sweden's 'new normal'
should be roundly rejected, as President Trump intimated.
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More on Rosengard in my
upcoming book — which I can't talk about at length right now — but safe to say
I believe none of this is "normal" and if it is the "new
normal" it should be roundly rejected as President Trump intimated earlier
this week, much to the chagrin of Sweden's censorious, liberal-left government.
This is the same in
Stockholm's suburbs of Rinkeby and Husby, where filmmaker Ami Horowitz was recently beaten up for attempting to film.
Within minutes of
exiting a cab outside central Husby, I was surrounded by drug dealers pushing
"hashish" and "marijuana." Within a few seconds more we
witness two van loads of Swedish police appearing to negotiate one man's arrest
from a building guarded by burly men.
"Why are there so
many satellite dishes?" I asked one of my guides.
"They don't watch
Swedish television. They don't speak Swedish. They want to receive television
from their home countries in their native languages."
This, apparently, is the
well-integrated paradise that CNN wants you to believe in.
A poster on a notice
board encourages women who are being beaten or abused by their partners to call
a number and speak out. A man laughs to himself hysterically as I take pictures
of his "street market stall" which consisted of a few clothes draped
over a wall, and a clearly broken, old computer. Men — and only men — gather
inside the central square's cafes, keeping a beady eye on us as they sip their
mint tea in the middle of the work day.
Just a few days before
my visit, police officers in the area were punched, kicked, and attacked with glass bottles
while on a routine patrol.
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President
Trump is right to communicate his disbelief about what is happening in
Sweden.
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Perhaps these areas
aren't truly "No Go Zones" for someone like me, broadly minding my
own business and chatting with local shop owners.
But for young women, for
police and other emergency services, you take your life into your hands when
you enter these areas. And it's not just in Sweden either.
You'll be able to read
more about my travels in my book. But from Molenbeek to Beziers to Malmo to
Paris to Dewsbury — Europe is being fundamentally altered by uncontrolled
migration. And that's why President Trump is right to communicate his disbelief
about what is happening in Sweden.
Raheem Kassam is a
Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of
Breitbart London.
