{"id":197000,"date":"2019-10-28T08:12:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T08:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197000"},"modified":"2019-10-31T07:09:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T07:09:11","slug":"no-sweden-hand-grenade-attacks-arent-an-image-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197000","title":{"rendered":"No, Sweden, hand grenade attacks aren\u2019t an \u2018image\u2019 problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

RT.com \u2013 Oct 27, 2019<\/h1>\n
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Police and criminal technical investigators look at a burnt car near the area of a shooting in Ribersborg, August 2019. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Stockholm was shaken by three explosions in one night last week. But the blasts didn\u2019t even make headlines. With violence rising, the country\u2019s government seems more concerned with downplaying the problem instead of tackling it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three explosions in one night would be front page news in any first-world city. But when Stockholm reverberated to multiple blasts in one night last week, national broadcaster SVT\u2019s nightly broadcast was silent, relegating the news to its web coverage instead. One of the targets, a Syrian Orthodox church, had already been bombed twice in the past year.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in Sweden, explosions no longer make the news. In 2018 there were 162 bombings reported to police, and 93 reported<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in the first five months of this year, 30 more than during the same period in 2018. The level of attacks is \u201cextreme in a country that is not at war,\u201d<\/em> Crime Commissioner Gunnar Appelgren told<\/strong><\/span><\/a> SVT last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The use of hand grenades is a purely Swedish phenomenon too, with no other country in Europe reporting their use on such a level, a police manager told<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Swedish Radio in 2016, a year after attacks first spiked.<\/span><\/p>\n

The grenades used almost exclusively originate in the former Yugoslavia, and are sold in Sweden for around $100 per piece. But while only three hand grenades were thrown in Kosovo<\/a><\/strong><\/span> between 2013 and 2014, more than 20 have been used in Sweden every year since 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

More broadly, homicide has risen in Sweden, with more than 300 shootings reported last year, causing 45 deaths. Though homicide rates had been in decline since 2002, they again began trending upwards<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in 2015, as did rapes and sexual assaults, which more than tripled<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>in the last four years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, 2015 was also the year in which Sweden flung open<\/a><\/strong><\/span> its doors to more than 160,000 asylum seekers, more per capita than any other European country. The right have blamed these newcomers for the rising rates of homicide and sexual violence, and Denmark\u2019s former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Swedish television last year that he often uses \u201cSweden as a deterring example\u201d<\/em> of mass immigration gone wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would any country in the throes of a crime wave do? In Sweden\u2019s case, the government and media have launched a concerted campaign to downplay the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Helsingborg police station, Sweden, after a recent bomb blast. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

In February 2017, a month after a hand grenade was lobbed<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>through the window of a police station in Katrineholm and days after another exploded<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a press release<\/strong><\/span><\/a> debunking \u201csimplistic and occasionally inaccurate information about migration, integration and crime in Sweden.\u201d<\/em> In it, gun crime was portrayed as a consequence of \u201ccriminal conflicts\u201d<\/em> and rising sexual violence attributed to a change in the definition of \u201crape\u201d<\/em> in Swedish law. The grenade attacks weren\u2019t mentioned, and the claim that the government isn\u2019t doing enough to stamp out crime was dismissed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The publication rubbished the link between immigrants and crime. However, a recent study from the Swedish Defence University has warned that the Swedish justice system is ill-equipped to police the parallel societies developing in immigrant neighborhoods, and newspaper Dagens Nyheter pointed out<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that 90 percent of shooting perpetrators in Sweden are either first or second generation immigrants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swedish police have identified 50 neighborhoods it considers \u201cvulnerable\u201d<\/em> \u2013 a term many have taken as a euphemism for \u201cno-go zones.\u201d<\/em> In tackling crime within them, the government has come up with some novel solutions, like implementing a \u2018grenade amnesty\u2019 last year, and kindly asking residents of violence-plagued Malmo to \u201cstop shooting<\/a>\u201d<\/em> <\/strong><\/span>each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither measure seems to have worked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, the government would seemingly rather Sweden be associated with IKEA and social cohesion than immigrant gangs and grenade attacks. After all, admitting to the crime wave would undermine the supposed success of the Nordic model, and suggesting that it may be connected with immigration would call into question Sweden\u2019s self-righteous status as a \u201chumanitarian superpower,\u201d<\/em> as former Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom described the country in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

To that end, the government has not ordered a police crackdown in crime-stricken neighborhoods or held a national debate on integration. Instead it has launched a PR campaign to fix Sweden\u2019s tarnished image abroad. The Swedish taxpayer funds the operation of the Swedish Institute to the tune of nearly $50 million per year. The institute is a sort of in-house PR agency that \u201cpromotes interest in Sweden around the world.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Among its projects are English-language videos downplaying the country\u2019s newfound reputation for crime, and the @sweden Twitter account, which spends its time literally telling critics \u201cnothing has happened here in Sweden.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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No. Nothing has happened here in Sweden. There has not ben any terrorist attacks here. At all. The main news right now is about Melfest. -><\/p>\n

— @sweden (@sweden) February 19, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n