RUTHFULLY YOURS

In early March, the Swedish government announced that the country’s tighter border controls at the Öresund Bridge might remain in place for the foreseeable future, and that they may even become permanent. The problem, however, is that this summer, a two-week lapse will occur. According to the current law, the government can only operate border controls six months at a time, and there is a two week waiting period before the controls can be reinstated. The gap will occur July 4-17, right in the middle of the European vacation period. Many people fear that tens of thousands of migrants will seize the opportunity to enter Sweden during this time. When the migration wave peaked in the fall of 2015, Sweden received 9,000 migrants per week. So far this year, the number has been steady at 600-700 per week.

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven recently stated: “The number of people coming to Sweden has decreased dramatically. More are applying for asylum in the EU. That was the whole point.”

According to the government, the “public order and inner safety of Sweden” would still be at risk if the border and ID checks were to cease.

The Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson, pointed out that sustaining the border controls sends an important signal to the half a million migrants now staying in Germany who have not sought asylum there. Neither minister mentioned anything, however, about how Sweden should avoid being flooded by these people during the two-week lapse in border controls.

March 2: An opinion poll by the Inizio polling institute, commissioned by the newspaper Aftonbladet, showed that 46% of Swedish women feel unsafe when they go out alone at night. Women who venture out despite their fears say they stay in constant contact with a friend or relative on their mobile phones while out at night.

March 4: At an asylum seekers residence in the small rural village of Storå, a 19-year-old man received a fatal knife wound to his throat. The police apprehended three suspects, all residents of the asylum seekers home, one of whom has since been remanded into custody. The murder caused great concern among the residents of the village. “I worry about everything. I don’t go out at night,” one woman told the public radio broadcaster, Sveriges Radio.

March 4: The Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson, explained that asylum seekers whose applications are rejected will no longer be entitled to free housing and a daily cash allowance. “We must make sure they go back home,” was the stern message from the minister. Presently, about 4,000 people are affected by the new rules, and if the decision is implemented, 2,000 of them will lose their place at asylum seekers residences. “We need these places for others who are seeking asylum, and that means making sure that those who have been rejected move and go home again,” said Johansson. Before the decision can come into effect, the Council on Legislation must have its say.

March 5: A new report on the lifestyle of migrants, in relation to the predominantly Islamic concept of honor, and based on interviews with 1,100 young people attending schools in the southern suburbs of Stockholm (90% of respondents were Muslims), confirmed the findings of earlier studies — that immigrant youths live in a different world from their Swedish peers. 83% of the girls are not allowed to have male friends, 62% of the boys are not allowed to have female friends, 51% have had secret relationships, 30% cannot date a person of a different ethnicity, and 65% said that their parents had already spoken to them about marriage.

Amineh Kakabaveh, president of the organization that conducted the interviews, told the local paper Södra Sidan that it is all due to patriarchal structures: “But why should we accept this in Sweden where we have equal rights by law? It is troublesome that so little has happened since 2005 when we [last] investigated the subject.”

March 6: The British Daily Mail newspaper accused its Swedish counterpart Aftonbladet of having faked a news story about an attack on Moroccan street children at the Stockholm Central Railway Station on January 29. Despite Aftonbladet’s vague information about a “violent vigilante mob of 200 people” and the inability of police to verify that anything actually happened, the news traveled rapidly across the planet. Daily Mail reporter Sue Reid flew to Sweden to investigate the story, and found it very much blown out of proportion. “This raises the disturbing question as to whether the anti-migrant rampage ever took place in the way described, ” Reid wrote.

The article probably caused the Swedish embassy in London even greater concern — the embassy had already expressed discontent with the Daily Mail’s coverage of Sweden back in February, when the embassy claimed that the paper was “campaigning against Sweden and Swedish immigration policy,” thus conveying a negative image of the state of affairs in Sweden.

March 6: After several sexual attacks on women in Östersund, the local police issued a warning that women are not safe outdoors after dark. Since February 20, eight women have been sexually assaulted or raped in the town, hence this very unusual and drastic warning by the police. The decision was heavily criticized. Östersund mayor AnnSofie Andersson, for example, said that she was convinced the police and the municipality had other means at their disposal, and that the police “should have come to us first, before making a statement like this.” After the warning, more criminal complaints were lodged, and now the police are focusing on nine cases involving multiple perpetrators — who may all belong to the same group.

March 7: It was reported that the young Syrian who murdered 15-year-old Arminas Pileckas at the Göingeskolan school in Broby will not be charged with murder, or penalized in any way — even though the investigation shows that he committed the murder. The age of criminal responsibility in Sweden is 15, and the murderer claims he is 14. Arminas Pileckas, whose family immigrated to Sweden from Lithuania, was apparently very well-liked. His murder stirred up emotion, not least because it turned out that he had protected a girl in his class from the Syrian’s unwanted sexual advances. Aftonbladet interviewed the murderer’s father, who blamed the school for his son’s stabbing Arminas in the back:

“The school did nothing to help him or to restore his honor [because the victim interfered with his sexual advances]. Instead, my son had to see [Arminas] at school every day. It upset him very much.”

Left: According to Sweden’s current law, the government can only operate border controls six months at a time, and there is a two week waiting period before the controls can be reinstated. Right: Fifteen-year-old Arminas Pileckas was stabbed to death at school, but the young Syrian who murdered him will not be charged or penalized. The age of criminal responsibility in Sweden is 15, and the murderer claims he is 14. The murderer’s father blamed the school, saying they “did nothing to help him or to restore his honor [because the victim interfered with his sexual advances]. Instead, my son had to see [Arminas] at school every day. It upset him very much.”

March 7: A bus driver in Dalarna was suspended from work after sharing posts on Facebook that were critical of immigration. His employer claimed that there was concern that the bus driver would not treat the passengers equally. A wave of public criticism of the bus company then led them to reverse the decision, and the driver was allowed back to work the next day. The company admitted that the driver had never treated anyone badly, and conceded that Sweden, after all, does have constitutional freedom of speech.

March 7: The “unaccompanied refugee child” from Afghanistan, who on December 9, 2015 burned down an asylum seekers residence in Uppsala where he lived, was sentenced to juvenile detention. The fire caused over five million kronor ($615,000) in damage; the building was completely destroyed. The Afghan, who claims to be 16-years-old, had created havoc at the home even before the fire, by throwing objects at the staff, among other things. The night of the fire, he was not given permission to go out late at night to buy candy. Furious, he threatened to destroy the television, which prompted the staff to move it into an office. He then threatened to “destroy everything if I do not get my way.” Early the next morning, he set fire to the building; staff members and other residents fled for their lives.

March 9: Panicked shoppers at the Hallunda mall ran for cover when a masked burglar pointed an automatic weapon at them. A group of robbers drove a car into a jewelry store and were busy plundering it, when an elderly man tried to intervene: “I walked up to one of them, but he knocked me over and threatened me with a weapon,” the man told the news site, Nyheter Idag. Several shots were fired, but no one was injured. So far, there have been no arrests.

March 10: An Iraqi man with Swedish citizenship was sentenced to one year in prison for abusing his wife and child. The man tried to force his wife and daughter to wear a veil; when they refused, he beat them and threatened them with a knife.

March 10: Two asylum-seeker families were so dissatisfied with the housing they were offered, located on the upscale Nygatan street in central Norrköping, that they refused to get off the bus. Because of this, traffic on the street was blocked. The police told the local daily, Norrköpings Tidningar:

“We remain at the scene, because things are a little jumbled there right now. The families are displeased with the standard of the apartment, so they refused to get off the bus at first. We are talking to the families right now, and referring them to the Social Services office on Drottninggatan or the Immigration Service.”

March 10: The street artist Dan Park, who has been convicted of “hate speech” on several occasions, was arrested again. According to the prosecution, the alleged offenses this time were committed on social media in May, June and September 2015, when he “made condescending remarks against persons concerning their ethnicity.”

The Swedish justice system, which frequently lets rapists get away with a “slap on the wrist,” has let loose in its campaign against the artist and his provocative images of Roma, black people and Muslims. In October 2014, he was sentenced to five months in prison — for exhibiting his work at an art gallery.

The only Swedish artist that has stood up for Dan Park’s right to express himself as an artist is Lars Vilks, who is himself still living under constant threat of death after drawing the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a roundabout dog in 2007. There have been several foiled plots to kill Mr. Vilks, and in February 2015, he became the target of a terrorist attack in Copenhagen, in which two people were murdered. Vilks himself was unhurt – largely due to the resolute actions of his bodyguards.

In Denmark, Dan Park has received quite different treatment by the media and the establishment. The public television broadcaster Danmarks Radio recently aired an hour-long documentary on the artist, who himself feels that Sweden is applying the Nazi concept Entartete Kunst, (“Degenerate Art”), where the state imprisons artists who produce “objectionable” art.

March 10: During the last two years, the Swedish Security Service has identified at least 60 asylum seekers as terrorists and a threat to the country. However, the Immigration Service refuses to deport them — because that would put the terrorists in mortal danger: “We do not have the death penalty in Sweden, and we do not send people to their deaths,” Immigration Service Chief Operating Officer Mikael Ribbenvik told public television Sveriges Television.

The people in question are confirmed terrorists, some with connections to Islamist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS), war criminals, and spies working for foreign intelligence services.

March 12: Several parents whose children attend the Centralskolan school in Kristianstad are keeping their kids home, after the children were physically abused by newly-arrived migrant students. The children were beaten, kicked, choked, and exposed to other kinds of abuse at the school, which has recently accepted a large number of new migrant students. The headmaster and the teachers have urged the Swedish students to just “walk away” when fights or conflicts with the immigrant children start.

March 12: Several Swedes were evicted from their homes in Örebro, when the house they live in was sold and remade into an asylum seekers residence. The tenants were notified via a letter that said they were to vacate their apartments within three months – or the Enforcement Authority would have them evicted. “I have lived here for four years, paid my rent and everything. But now I am being thrown out,” a tenant, Roger Lund, told the local daily Nerikes Allehanda. The landlord says that the tenants have been living in the building on so-called “demolition contracts,” and therefore, their leases can be terminated on short notice.

March 14: The catastrophic slide that Swedish students have undergone in the Pisa tests (Programme for International Student Assessment, testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students) in the last few years is largely due to immigration from third world countries, according to a report by the National Agency for Education (Skolverket). About 85% of the drop in high school eligibility turns out to be due to an increasing number of students having arrived after the term has started, and thus having a poorer performance than the other students.

March 14: A 25-year-old immigrant from North Africa was sentenced to jail and deportation for raping a Swedish woman. The man was massaging the woman, when he suddenly started licking her ears, and then raped her. The rapist’s wife testified in court that her husband is a perfect gentleman.

During the trial, the rapist vehemently denied that he made any sexual advances towards the woman: “Only God knows how my DNA ended up in her ears,” he said.

March 14: A vigilante group calling themselves the Soldiers of Odin has started patrolling Swedish cities, with the declared goal of preventing rapes and other assaults. The police, who constantly complain that they are so understaffed they do not have the resources to be out on the streets helping the citizens, suddenly found the means to stop the group and search its members.

Soldiers of Odin was founded in 2015 in Finland, as a reaction to the country’s tenfold increase in immigration over the last year. Its founder, Mika Ranta, is said to have once belonged to a neo-Nazi organization. In a very short time, Soldiers of Odin has grown exponentially, and now has representatives in some 20 Swedish cities. In an interview with online news site Fria Tider, the group’s spokesman, Mikael Johansson, said that the members wished the police had the resources to do the “work” that they themselves are now doing.

March 17: A 19-year-old Somali was put on trial for a series of brutal muggings of elderly Swedes. Several of the victims were injured during the muggings. A 76-year-old woman was bitten on the hand. She had just been to the bank and had made a 10,000 kronor (about $1,100) withdrawal, without noticing that the thief was following her. When she went into a store and picked up her wallet, he tried to snatch it. When the woman would not let go, he bit her. The man was indicted on five counts of aggravated robbery – all of them against people aged 75-85. One of them lost 15,000 kronor ($1,700).

In the past, the Somali thief was convicted of aggravated robbery, aggravated theft, drug-related offenses, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. He is a Swedish citizen and lives on welfare.

March 18: The Australian TV show 60 minutes aired a program filmed when they visited the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby – and were attacked. News of the attack on the Australian film crew arrived several weeks earlier, but was ridiculed and questioned, as 60 minutes were guided in Rinkeby by the Swedish immigration critic Jan Sjunnesson, of the alternative media site Avpixlat. Now, everyone could see for themselves how the crew was attacked as soon as they got out of their car, and that the police refused to escort them because that might “provoke the residents in the area.”

March 18: The government announced that this fall, age-testing of “unaccompanied refugee children” will be implemented. For many years, Swedish politicians have claimed that it is impossible to perform such age-testing, a policy which has led to obviously grown men passing as children. Now,

March 21: Three immigrants from the Middle East were convicted of setting several fires targeting social workers in Botkyrka. The fires broke out on five different premises, all belonging to Social Services, and at a social worker’s private residence in Värmdö. The reason apparently was that a younger disabled brother of one of the accused had been taken into care by Social Services. The District Court ruled that the fires were part of a “planned and systematic campaign against Social Services in Botkyrka.” Two of the three were sentenced to 18 months in jail; one received probation.

March 22: In Sollefteå, the municipality suddenly discovered something that has been obvious to many Swedes for a long time: that adult asylum seekers claim to be “unaccompanied refugee children.” Three people were evicted from municipal housing for children when it became clear they were actually adults.

Majed Safaee, of the Sollefteå municipality, commented to Sveriges Television that “we’re not just talking about a couple of years here or there. We argue that these are adults who have no place in a home for unaccompanied children. Our reception operation needs to function, and it doesn’t if adults are living with children.”

The decision was immediately criticized by the reporter: “The damage is already done for the three refugee children. They were stripped of their trustees and lost their right to financial aid according to the Social Services Act, as soon as they were considered older than 18. Now they are on their own.”

March 23: The Immigration Service admitted, at least to some degree, that Christians are persecuted by Muslims at asylum seeker residences in Sweden. The Immigration Service said that something will be done about that — maybe. So far, the Immigration Service has refused to separate Christians and Muslims, because “segregated asylum houses would go against Swedish democratic values.”

But when the head of the Syrian-Orthodox church, Mor (S:t) Afrem Karim II, wrote a letter to the Swedish Minister for Migration and the Director General of the Immigration Service, pleading that Sweden offer special housing for Christians and other asylum seekers who are being threatened by Muslims, the answer was:

“We are currently examining the possibilities of offering a limited range of special housing for individuals that feel unsafe where they are staying due to the behavior of others. These facilities would be open to anyone in need of a safer place regardless of nationality or religious beliefs.”

March 23: In the heavily immigrant city of Malmö, several people were shot during the course of one evening, in incidents not thought to be related. In the Lindängen district, the police found two men shot and one severely beaten, in Rosengård, a cab driver reported that someone had fired shots at a person he had been sent to pick up, and later a man with gunshot wounds was found in an apartment in Augustenborg. Fortunately, everyone survived.

March 25: Dan Eliasson, the controversial National Police Chief, unilaterally decided to hire 700 new police officers, even though parliament has not yet decided to allocate funds for new recruits. For the highest police official in the country to take the law into his own hands is rather unorthodox, but Eliasson explained that he simply did not have time to wait for the go-ahead from the government, and that the need for additional staff was urgent:

“I have anticipated the parliament’s decision and asked the regions to hire more people, even if they do not have the money right now. I believe and hope that the parliament and the government realize the seriousness of the situation and give us the money after the fact.”

March 29: “Negro” is now officially a forbidden word in Sweden. In a short time span, several people have been convicted of “hate speech” after saying or writing this word. In March, a man in his thirties is sentenced to probation and will be made to undergo a Swedish Prison and Probation service treatment program. He is found guilty of “expressing himself in a derogatory manner and spreading contempt against this ethnic group” on the internet forum Flashback, where he used “terms such as negro and other derogatory remarks and comments.”

Since all users of the Flashback forum are anonymous, and the servers are located abroad, it is usually risk-free to write just about anything there. But in this case, the police had gotten an anonymous tip — which they processed with the utmost seriousness — about the man. They stormed the man’s apartment, and were lucky enough to find his computer turned on and logged on to Flashback under the username in question. The police seized the computer, memory cards, hard drives, a mobile phone and “propaganda” from the Sweden Democrats Party.

In October last year, three 15-year-old boys were convicted in the Court of Appeal for lower Norrland, after they had “uttered the word ‘negro’ several times” at school. In 2014, a 17-year-old girl was convicted of insulting a 29-year-old African, whom she called a negro. The fact that the insult came after the African called her and her friend “f**king Swedies” was not a mitigating circumstance, according to the court. Blacks are apparently allowed to call whites anything they choose; it is only a punishable offense when whites use supposedly inappropriate words against blacks.

March 29: A particularly brutal rape against a woman in Ludvika in August resulted in five Eritrean men being sentenced to eight months in prison, and one man, five years in prison. The woman was lured into an apartment in which there were eight men; one of them raped her while the others held her down. She escaped by jumping out a second story window. In December, a District Court acquitted two of the men, while five received ten months in prison for aggravated rape, and one, five years in prison. The prosecutor considered the men refugees, and therefore did not even press for deportation. The Court of Appeals concurred with the five-year sentence against the 21-year-old, but lowered the others’ sentences to eight months — for “neglecting to report a crime.”

March 30: Two men who participated in executions in Syria in 2013 were sentenced to life in prison by the Svea Court of Appeals, thereby confirming the conviction from the Gothenburg District Court from last year. One of the judges, Niklas Wågnert, explained to the Swedish public radio station, Sveriges Radio:

“The Court of Appeals also believes that the purpose of the murders was to instill serious fear in those who do not share the opinions of the accused, and that the deeds are such that they can be said to have done real damage to the state of Syria. This court shares the opinion of the District Court, that actions such as these warrant life in prison.”

The sentence is unusual — there has only been one such case in Sweden before, in which both the District and the Appeals courts have convicted someone of terrorist crimes; that was in 2005 and concerned financing attacks in Iraq.

March 30: Three African men were sentenced to four years in prison and deportation after gang-raping a Swedish woman in Ludvika in October 2015. The men followed the woman around town, and caught up with her in an alley where they formed a ring round her. They pulled down her underwear and held her down so they could rape her vaginally and anally. The rape lasted at least 15 minutes, and the woman cried for help the whole time. Finally, a Swedish man appeared at the scene, which caused the rapists scatter and run.

The police found the rapists by DNA-testing a number of suspects. Two of the men are from Eritrea, and have had permanent residency status in Sweden since 2015. The third man is an asylum seeker from Sudan. The court ruling states that “in light of the situation in Eritrea,” deportations to that country cannot be enforced — meaning that the rapists will remain in Sweden for the foreseeable future.

March 30: Another gang-rape took place aboard a ferry to Finland. In all, six young men are suspects in the case. Five of them have an immigrant background; the sixth has a Swedish mother and a Somali father.

The rape occurred when a large group of young people sailed on the M/S Galaxy to celebrate their high school graduation. Two of the accused rapists, now in custody, turned out to also be suspects in an earlier murder investigation. But because the prosecutor chose not to remand them into custody in connection with that investigation, they were free to go on the ferry trip, and apparently commit another serious crime.

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.