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 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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