Malmö has recently taken another
logical step towards its Islamization: Starting from the fall of 2005, the
district of Hyllie will begin education
in Arabic only for groups of immigrant preschool children. The idea is
that once the children learn the language of their parents, it will become
easier for them to learn Swedish as well. So the Swedish state paying for
educating Swedish citizens on Swedish ground in Arabic is somehow supposed
to increase integration. On the other hand, perhaps being good dhimmis and
teaching in Arabic can stop one of the latest fads in Sweden: Burning
schools. At least 139 schools in Sweden suffered arson attacks during 2002
alone. Such as a recent incident in Malmö, where
three schools were put on fire during one night. "Teenage
boys" are suspected to behind the arson. Björn Vinberg from the fire
department in Kroksbäck in the Malmö area says it's humiliating
and degrading to put out fires again and again in the same immigrant
areas, with school kids laughing at them and lighting a new one just
afterwards. His colleagues have been to the same place no less than twenty
times, all totally unnecessary.
While Malmö may be an especially appalling example, instability is
spreading to most of Sweden's urban and suburban areas, and now permeates
all levels of society. Street
violence of all kinds is soaring on a national level. Private
security companies are in great demand in major Swedish cities, as a serious
lack of police to combat rising crime has made many citizens tired of
being robbed. Amnesty International concluded that acts of violence
against women had spiralled upward in Sweden in the last 15 years, a
jump that could not be explained away as merely a greater willingness by
women to report the incidents. A large majority of Swedish
Members of Parliament, but even many politicians on lower and local
levels, say they experience threats or violence. Many of them say the
harassment is so bad they consider leaving politics.
In Husby, a Stockholm suburb, gangs of immigrant youngsters are harassing
other visitors who come to use the swimming pool. A Swedish school
class was attacked and robbed by a large group of teenage boys shouting
"Swedish bastards! (Svennejävlar) You don't belong here!" The police
in Husby are aware of the problem, but say it is an integration
problem that the police can't solve alone. In another case, some twenty youths
armed with iron rods and chains smashed the Hjulsta school in
Stockholm. They also threatened and attacked several of the pupils.
Neither the students nor the teachers dare testify to the police about the
incident. Their fears are well-founded, as threats
against witnesses in Swedish court cases have quadrupled between 2000
and 2003.
Sweden, only a few decades ago an extremely homogeneous society, has had
more immigration during the past years than almost any other Western
nation. Two
out of three new Swedes are actually immigrants. While political parties
in neighboring Denmark quarrel over whether to roll back immigration
even further, there is virtually no public debate in Sweden. This despite
the fact that Sweden granted 24,553 residence permits under family
reunification last year, compared to Denmark's 4791. Danish politicians
have justified strict laws as a bid to prevent arranged marriages, or
matches coerced by immigrant parents to placate families in the home
country. Denmark has also passed a resolution stating that family
reunification applications by young people should be rejected if the
couple's parents entered an arranged marriage themselves. Sweden's
politicians view arranged marriages as a positive tradition: a cultural
pattern that immigrants should be allowed to preserve even in Sweden. The
Swedish government feels that interfering in arranged marriages is an
encroachment upon private life. In addition, immigrant couples can apply
for family reunification in Sweden even if they've never seen each other
before. The nation's liberal reunification laws have led to almost double
the number of immigrants in Sweden as in Denmark.
This massive, uncontrolled immigration is starting to take its toll. The
number of ghettos, a phenomenon that until recently was unheard of in
wealthy and egalitarian Scandinavian nations, has
been increasing explosively. 14 years ago, there were only 3 such
areas in all of Sweden. Today, there are 136. Stockholm politician Annika
Billström warns against the dangers of creating ghettos in Sweden. Rock
throwing and attacks against buses and trains are increasing problems
in some suburbs. In Malmö the bus lines in the area of Rosengård have
been cancelled. In Stockholm, the authorities went even further and
stopped both the bus traffic in the Tensta suburb and the train to Nynäshamn.
Head of the bus company in the city of Uppsala, Claes-Göran Alm, is
considering doing the same, as the harassment is costing too much money
and is putting their employees at risk. Benny Persson is selling window
glass in the areas south of Stockholm. According to him, they sometimes
have to jump into the car and leave the spot, as they are met with the
harassment that some of the bus companies in the suburbs are experiencing:
Stone throwing and threats. The same thing is reported from Gothenburg,
Sweden’s second largest city. The company Hemglass are now attempting to
run double crews in their cars to face the problems, but they still have
had to completely abandon an area outside Södertälje. If you get stuck
in an elevator outside Stockholm, you risk staying there for a long time.
The repair personnel now demand security guards present when they arrive,
since several of their employees have been physically attacked. The most
serious problem, however, is the delay
of ambulances and the fire department. According to the Emergency
Central, attacks against them have become commonplace in the cities. Every
Saturday, at least five to ten times emergency personnel are asking for
police escort to be able to do their job. The segregation in the worst hit
areas of Sweden has
not been broken, despite many attempts. This according to a new study
that has followed about 270 000 persons that have lived in 20 of the worst
hit areas of the Stockholm region. Researchers Roger Andersson and Åsa Bråmå
have followed all the 270 000 persons during the 1990s. These areas have
received billions from different funds designed to prevent segregation.
But the percentage of persons with non-Swedish ethnic background has
increased from 57 to 73 during this period.
How can all of this be allowed to unfold in a seemingly civilized country?
Jonathan
Friedman is a New
York Jew now living with his Swedish wife in the southern Swedish city of
Malmø where he teaches socio-anthropology at the University of Lund.
As an outsider he is able to comment candidly on issues which native
Swedes would be quite unable to for fear of retribution for overstepping
the invisible PC bounds. "No debate about immigration polices is
possible, the subject is simply avoided. Sweden has such a close
connection between the various powerful groups, politicians, journalists,
etc. The political class is closed, isolated. And add to that, that the
Social Democrats have had something like near monopoly on the power. The
elite, in their isolation and due to their isolation, has become more and
more scared of the people and what they might think and believe. Jonathan
Friedman thinks circumstances in Sweden are special also because Sweden
has a long tradition of maintaining a correct surface. "Bergman's
movies weren't about anything else. It was all about demons hiding under
the dry and correct surface. The Swedish supreme court has in a ruling in
principle made clear the fact that racism is something which is done by
Swedes and not anyone else. This despite many of the gang rapes, wherein
by the way immigrants are massively overrepresented as perpetrators, have
clear racist traits. But this they don't want to know, and this we are not
allowed to know." "Sweden has lots of conflicts and a rising
insecurity. We have witnessed several incidents of what I would call
classical racist nature, wherein two groups of people violently clash.
Crime is going up. The newly arrived are largely unemployed, and this
costs the welfare state much money. The welfare state is based on a closed
system, it can handle a limited group of people. It can't in any way deal
with an open society, but this kind of insight is too much for politicians
in general. When voting in Sweden you pick your voting card from the
political representatives outside the voting booths, and then walk across
the hall to the voting booth and select which candidate you want to vote
for - only there inside the booth where you select the party candidate are
you hidden from view. This means everybody can see which party you are
going to vote for, and in a society like Sweden where social control is
very widespread this creates an atmosphere where certain political parties
are heavily discriminated against.
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