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§ The Swedish state, in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish
citizens who point out the obvious problems that migrants are causing.
§ When police officer Peter Springare said in February that migrants
were committing a disproportionate amount of crime in the suburbs, he was
investigated for inciting "racial hatred".
§ Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish pensioner is being prosecuted for
"hate speech", for writing on Facebook that migrants "set fire
to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets".
The security situation in Sweden is now
so critical that the national police chief, Dan Eliasson, has asked the public for
help; the police are unable to solve the problems on their own. In June, the
Swedish police released a new report, "Utsatta områden 2017",
("Vulnerable Areas 2017", commonly known as "no-go zones"
or lawless areas). It shows that the 55 no-go zones of a year ago are now 61.
In September 2016, Prime Minister Stefan
Löfven and Minister of Interior Anders Ygeman refused to see the warnings: in
2015, only 14% of all crimes
in Sweden were solved, and in 2016, 80% of police officers were allegedly considering quitting the
force. Both ministers refused to call it a crisis. According to Anders Ygeman:
"... we are in a very difficult
position, but crisis is something completely different. ...we are in a very
strained position and this is because we have done the biggest reorganization
since the 1960s, while we have these very difficult external factors with the
highest refugee reception since the Second World War. We have border controls
for the first time in 20 years, and an increased terrorist threat".
A year later the Swedish national police
chief is calling the situation
"acute".
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In 2015,
only 14% of all crimes in Sweden were solved. In 2016, 80% of police officers
were allegedly considering quitting the force. Nonetheless, Prime Minister
Stefan Löfven refused to call it a crisis.
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Sweden increasingly resembles a failed
state: In the 61 "no-go zones", there are 200 criminal networks with
an estimated 5,000 criminals who are
members. Twenty-three of those no-go zones are especially critical: children as
young as 10 years old are involved in serious crimes
there, including weapons and drugs, and are literally being trained to become
hardened criminals.
The trouble, however, extends beyond
organized crime. In June, Swedish police in the city of Trollhättan, during a
riot in the Kronogården suburb, were attacked by
approximately a hundred masked migrant youths, mainly Somalis. The rioting
continued for two nights.
Violent riots, however, are just part of
Sweden's security problems. In 2010, according to the government, there were
"only" 200 radical Islamists in
Sweden. In June, the head of the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), Anders
Thornberg, told the Swedish media
that the country is experiencing a "historical" challenge in having
to deal with thousands of "radical Islamists in Sweden". The
jihadists and jihadist supporters are mainly concentrated in
Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Örebro, according to Säpo. "This is the
'new normal' ... It is an historic challenge that extremist circles are
growing," Thornberg said.
The Swedish establishment has only itself
to blame for it.
Thornberg said that Säpo now receives
around 6,000 intelligence tips a month concerning terrorism and extremism,
compared to an average of 2,000 a month in 2012.
Some of the reasons for the increase, according to terror
expert Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish Defense University, is due to segregation
in Sweden's no-go zones:
"... it has been easy for extremists
to recruit undisturbed in those areas. ...the prevention measures have been
pretty tame... if you compare Denmark and Sweden, Denmark is at university
level and Sweden at kindergarten level".
Asked what the increase in people
supporting extremist ideologies indicated about Sweden's work to combat
radicalism, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman told the Swedish news
outlet TT:
"I think it says little. This is a
development we have seen in a number of countries in Europe. On the other hand,
it shows that it was right to take those measures we have. A permanent centre
against violent extremism, that we have increased the budget to work against
violent extremism, that we have increased the security police's budget for
three years."
There may be even more jihadists than
Säpo thinks. In 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis, when Sweden received
over 160,000 migrants, 14,000 of them who were told that they were going to be
deported disappeared inside
Sweden without a trace. As late as April 2017, Sweden was still looking for 10,000 of
them. Sweden, however, has only 200 border police staff at its disposal to look
for them. One "disappeared migrant" was Rakhmat Akilov, from
Uzbekistan. He drove a truck into a department store in Stockholm, killing four
people and wounding many others. He later said he did it for the Islamic State
(ISIS).
Meanwhile, Sweden continues to receive
returning ISIS fighters from Syria, a courtesy that hardly improves the
security situation. Sweden, so far, has received 150 returning
ISIS fighters. There are still 112 who remain abroad -- considered the most
hardcore of all -- and Sweden expects many of those to return as well.
Astonishingly, the Swedish government has given several of the ISIS returnees protected identities to
prevent local Swedes from finding out who they are. Two Swedish ISIS fighters
who returned to Europe, Osama Krayem and Mohamed Belkaid,
went on to help commit the terror attacks at Brussels airport and the Maelbeek
metro station in the center of Brussels, on March 22, 2016. Thirty-one people
were killed; 300 were wounded.
Swedish news outlets have reported that the
Swedish towns that receive the returnees do not even know they are
returning ISIS fighters. One coordinator of the work against violent Islamist
extremism in Stockholm, Christina Kiernan, says that "...at
the moment there is no control over those returning from ISIS-controlled areas
in the Middle East".
Kiernan explains that there are
rules that prevent the passing of information about returning jihadists from
Säpo to the local municipalities, so that the people who are in charge in the
municipal authorities, including the police, have no information about who and
how many returned ISIS fighters there are in their area. It is therefore
impossible to monitor them -- and this at a time when Säpo estimates the number
of violent Islamist extremists in Sweden in the thousands.
Even after all this, the Swedish state,
in true Orwellian style, fights those Swedish citizens who point out the
obvious problems that migrants are causing. When police officer Peter Springare
said in February that migrants were committing a disproportionate amount of
crime in the suburbs, he was investigated for inciting
"racial hatred".
Currently, a 70-year-old Swedish
pensioner is being prosecuted for "hate
speech", for writing on Facebook that migrants "set fire
to cars, and urinate and defecate on the streets".
With thousands of jihadists all over
Sweden, what could be more important than prosecuting a Swedish pensioner for
writing on Facebook?
Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and
political analyst.