Matthew Fisher: Tensions with Sweden’s refugee communities challenge the country’s liberal image of itself.
Rosengard, where more than 80 per cent of the population was
not born in Sweden, has become widely regarded a flashpoint for communal
strife
August 18, 2017
3:07 PM EDT
Filed under
MALMO, Sweden — One afternoon, as I asked two young women for
directions to the Arab bazaar in the district of Rosengard, near this
city’s centre, a man appeared seemingly from nowhere and, shouting at
the women in Iraqi-accented Arabic, said something to them that caused
them literally to run away.
Rounding on me, the man, probably in his late twenties with a
well-groomed beard, demanded by what right had I spoken to his sister
and her friend. I answered that I had only been seeking directions.
His sister had been raised in Sweden, he said, and therefore did not
understand that European men were pedophiles and that it was perilous
for her to speak with them for any reason. Approaching me again later in
the crowded bazaar, where almost all the signs were in Arab script and
some of the women were totally covered by hijabs, he declined to give
his name but said that he was a dentistry student. Before stomping off,
he said he was furious with the West for having murdered Muslim women
and children in the Middle East, and vowed that Islam’s green flag would
fly one day over Sweden.
It would be unfair to describe this exchange as typical. Many Arabs
that I have met during several visits to Rosengard over the past few
years have been gracious and helpful. But ethnic tensions have
definitely been rising in Sweden, a country of just 10 million people
which in 2015 accepted 163,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Iraq
and Afghanistan. More than 80 per cent of the people living in the Malmo
suburb of Rosengard speak Arabic
Rosengard, where more than 80 per cent of the population was not born
in Sweden, has become widely regarded a flashpoint for communal strife.
I was told again and again by Swedes and Arabs in Sweden’s
third-largest city that the slightly scruffy neighbourhood (few
communities in Scandinavia are truly scruffy) had already become a
virtual No-Go Zone for fire trucks and ambulances unless protected by a
robust police escort and that when crimes were committed the community
was tight lipped with police about what had happened.
In an open letter to the public earlier this year, Malmo’s police
chief, Stefan Sinteus, pleaded for help solving the murder of a
16-year-old Iraqi boy, Ahmed Obaid, who had been shot in the head in
Rosengard, as well as with more than 100 other serious crimes including
murders, attempted murders, rape and assault. This followed a Christmas
Eve bombing in 2014 and a wave of violence during the summer of 2015.
“I can assure you that the police in Malmo are doing everything we
can for suspected perpetrators to be held accountable,” Sinteus said.
“But we cannot do it on our own.”
Finding an ethnic Swede who lives in Rosengard was not easy. One of
the very few was 28-year-old Josefine Angusson, was shopping in small
mall near the bazaar with her three-year-old son.
Her voice full of despair, Angusson said she had lived all her life in Rosengard but was planning to move “far away” next week.
“There is a lot of violence and drugs and shooting here,” she said.
“It’s gangs, and not many of them are Swedish. My son has nobody to play
with because he doesn’t speak Arabic. None of our neighbours talk to
me.
“I am not a racist at all but it’s like that. We are looking for
another option where we can live because all of Malmo will be become
like this. Swedes are not happy about it. Would Canadians be?”
Despite Sweden’s famously liberal social traditions there was a
perception that refugees were overtaxing the country’s generous welfare
system, hospitals and schools and that finding places for the newcomers
to live and to work was becoming problematic. Nobody seemed to know for
sure, but there are published reports in Sweden that the unemployment
rate in Rosengard exceeds 60 per cent.
“We hate it because of the murders, and they all seem to be Arabs
getting killed,” said Eddie Hagmann, whose work as a security guard
takes him through Rosengard three times every night to check on some
properties there.
“When we go on foot patrols there have to always be three of us. I am 21. I don’t want to die for this job.”
A fear that is much discussed in the media is that Rosengard and
Arab-majority neighborhoods elsewhere in Sweden have become home to
large numbers of Islamic extremists.
Sweden’s top spy, Anders Thornberg, believes that where there were
fewer than 200 Islamic extremists in the country 10 years ago that
number has today exploded into the thousands.
“We have never seen anything like this before,” Thornberg told Sweden’s TT news agency. “This is the new normal,”
Until recently, welcoming refugees was a central part of how most
Swedes regarded themselves. But several polls taken this year have found
that more than half the population wanted the government to curb the
number of refugees it accepts. This dovetailed with a survey by the
state statistics agency that indicated about one Swede in five supports
the strongly anti-immigration Swedish Democrats, who are now second only
to the ruling Social Democrats in popularity and the third party in
parliament.
Pondering the changing mood, a young man who would only give his name
as Mahmoud, and who had arrived in Malmo from the former Yugoslavia as a
refugee with his parents as a young child said, “Swedes don’t have a
problem with Muslims. They have a problem with Arabs. The cultures are
just so different. And those differences are worse in Malmo than
anywhere else.”
Palestinian-Iraqi Abdulhamid Abuqweili said a lot had changed since he arrived in the city as a refugee 14 years ago.
“Sweden is a very good country but it cannot take in so many
refugees. The cost to the people who are already here is too great,”
Abuqweili said during a drive around Rosengard, which is mostly drab
apartment towers occasionally brightened by a wall mural depicting Arab
life.
It is a wonderful thing to help people but it must be done in the right way
“The radicals who have come are bad for the other Arabs. The Swedes
think that when Arabs are together there will be problems. Those who
come now don’t want to learn the language. They want to live as they did
back home.”
With Sweden’s traditional centre-left leaders feeling intense
pressure from the surging right, the government has become much more
vigilant about who gets into their country. For example, I spent an hour
on a packed, overheated train at the first stop in Sweden after the
road and rail bridge from Copenhagen while teams of police went through
every car carefully examining travelers’ documents.
Carina Costa-Correa, who had emigrated to Spain but was back visiting
her family in Malmo, said that was happening in her homeland today was
“a well-intentioned disaster. There was no plan for how to deal with so
many refugees at once who arrived with little or no education or skills.
Clearly it would be much better to help them where they were rather
than here. But the government was blind to that.”
As he waited for his train at the Malmo station, 56-year-old tire
salesman Roger Knast said over a beer that, “Swedes think the country is
overcrowded with Muslims. But it is still generally considered a bad
thing to say it, so it is said quietly.
“This is a crisis for Sweden. The government asked us to open our
hearts to refugees but they don’t see the consequences. There are so
many of them that they no longer mix in and we have created a whole
industry of people who take care of them. It is a wonderful thing to
help people but it must be done in the right way. It is time for us to
close our borders and take care of those who are already here.”
Twitter: @mfisheroverseas
