Last night in Sweden visar sig visst inte vara bara ett Trumpskt oinformerat dumhetsuttryck. Självaste New York Times betraktar förundrat den bild av Sverige som exponeras allt tydligare. Avstamp tas i begravningen av den man som sprängdes av en upplockad handgranat mitt i Stockholmsförorten Vårby Gård en helt vanlig januarimorgon.
Citat:
Weapons from a faraway, long-ago war are flowing into immigrant neighborhoods here, puncturing Swedes’ sense of confidence and security. The country’s murder rate remains low, by American standards, and violent crime is stable or dropping in many places. But gang-related assaults and shootings are becoming more frequent, and the number of neighborhoods categorized by the police as “marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity” is rising. Crime and immigration are certain to be key issues in September’s general election, alongside the traditional debates over education and health care.
Part of the reason is that Sweden’s gang violence, long contained within low-income suburbs, has begun to spill out. In large cities, hospitals report armed confrontations in emergency rooms, and school administrators say threats and weapons have become commonplace. Last week two men from Uppsala, both in their 20s, were arrested on charges of throwing grenades at the home of a bank employee who investigates fraud cases.
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That a grenade should be found on the sidewalk outside a kebab shop, a few steps from an elementary school, was difficult for him [den libanesiske kebabhaksinnehavaren] to take in.
“Now, when I think of the future, I am afraid,” he said. “I am afraid for Europe.”
Illegal weapons often enter Sweden over the Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile span that links the southern city of Malmo to Denmark. When it opened, in 2000, the bridge symbolized the unfurling of a vibrant, borderless Europe, but in recent years it has been more closely associated with smuggling, of people, weapons and drugs.
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The border with Denmark is open, with insufficient personnel to search every vehicle entering the country. Hand grenades were, until last year, classified as “flammable products” rather than weapons, so sentences for detonating them were mild. The police are struggling to gather information in immigrant neighborhoods, and clearance rates for gun homicide cases have fallen steadily since the 1990s.
“We have lost the trust from the people who lived and worked in this area,” said Gunnar Appelgren, a police superintendent and specialist in gang violence.
Sweden’s far right-wing party blames the government’s liberal immigration policy for the rising crime, and will thrust the issue to the fore in the fall campaign.
Last year, Peter Springare, 61, a veteran police officer in Orebro, published a furious Facebook post saying violent crimes he was investigating were committed by immigrants from “Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown country, unknown country, Sweden.” It was shared more than 20,000 times; Mr. Springare has since been investigated twice by state prosecutors, once for inciting racial hatred, though neither resulted in charges.
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Mr. Appelgren has watched the trend apprehensively, calling it an arms race among gangs.
“I think we’re going to see, if we don’t stop it, more drive-by shootings with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades,” he said. “They throw rocks and bottles at our cars, and they trick us in an ambush. When will it happen that they ambush us with Kalashnikovs? It’s coming.”
Much of the problem is the supply of surplus weapons. The Dayton peace agreement, which ended the Bosnian war, required paramilitaries to disarm and decommission their arsenals. Sellers in Bosnia and Serbia have networks in Sweden’s diaspora and are so eager to unload excess grenades, often rusted from decades in storage, that they throw them in free with the purchase of AK-47s, Mr. Appelgren said. In Sweden the street price of a hand grenade is 100 kroner, or $12.50.
“It’s odd,” said Manne Gerell, a lecturer in criminology at Malmo University. “I don’t know of any Western country with a similar use of hand grenades. Our hypothesis is that they are used to send a message. Not so much as a weapon, as a tool for intimidation. You don’t need perfect aim. You are not trying to kill a particular person.”
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Varby Gard has produced a street gang, the Varby Gard Network, which the police have been monitoring for two years. It is led by a Tunisian man and populated by first- and second-generation immigrants from Finland, the Balkans and Africa, said Lars Broms, a detective who is investigating Mr. Zuniga’s death. Intent on protecting its monopoly on the local drug trade, it is fluid and loosely organized, but like other suburban gangs in Sweden, it is developing quickly, he said.
“Give them 20 years, and we’ll have the same as in L.A.,” Mr. Broms said.
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“Crime is increasing and increasing, and they aren’t doing anything about it,” Mr. Garrido (en vän och chilensk landsman till den granatdödade Mr Zuniga] said. “It’s denial. Swedes are very good people and they want to change the world. They want the rest of the world to be like Sweden. And the reality is that it’s completely different.”
So Mr. Zuniga, who was nearing retirement, had planned his exit, squirreling money away to build a house in Thailand, where his wife’s family lived. He told friends he planned to go in April.
Detta mustiga reportage om ett till oigenkännlighet förändrat Sverige avslutas med ett citat från granatoffrets änka.
Citat:
“He reiterated that if he died, I must return to Thailand,” she said of her husband. “He didn’t want me to live here after he died. He told me to sell the house and just leave.”
Föregångsland i någon positiv bemärkelse verkar inte vara det som först kommer för en betraktare utifrån, snarare ett mångkulturellt harmageddon där den diaspora av bosnier som så ihärdigt framhållits som en solskensomgärdad framgångssaga för Sverige visar sig utgöra distributionscenter för illegala balkanvapen.
