At the beginning of August three people were seriously injured in a shooting in broad daylight near a shopping center in Kristianstad, in southern Sweden.
The previous month, a policeman was shot while on patrol in a suburb of Gothenburg, the second largest city in the country.
A few days after that event, which had already shocked Swedish society, two hooded men broke into a barbershop from the same city to shoot ten times at a young customer, before fleeing.
These are just three of the more than 180 shooting incidents recorded by the police so far this year.
In the decade of the 90, Sweden was one of the safest nations in Europe, with an enviable quality of life and extremely low crime rates; Today it has become the continental capital of shootings.
According to official figures, the Scandinavian country registered 366 firearms incidents in 2020, which resulted in 47 deaths.
The most alarming thing about the matter is that the number of shootings has not stopped increasing since the decade of 2000, according to a report from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA).
In 2000, Sweden ranked 18 from 22 countries in Europe by number of deaths per capita in shootings. Fifteen years later, in 2015, it became in the second European country where being shot is more common; Back then it was only surpassed by Croatia.
But in 2018, the latest year for which data has been released, rose to the unwanted first place in fatalities by gunshot in Europe, according to the report. of the BRA, which was carried out with data from the European Statistical Office, Eurostat.
” Disturbing “
” It is very disturbing and an enigma for those of us who study this problem, “says Klara Hradilova Selin, a researcher at the BRA, to BBC Mundo.
“Crime in general has not increased , in fact it has decreased, but the number of shootings continues to rise,” he continues.
According to Eurostat, Sweden was the fifth country in the European Union (EU) where the most robberies per inhabitant were registered on average between 2016 and 2018, behind Belgium, France and Spain.
During that period, 86 robberies for each 100 thousand inhabitants in the Scandinavian nation, above the average of 70 of the EU.
The country is even more clear from the European average when comparing the numbers of homicides with firearms.
In Sweden it is approximately four deaths per million inhabitants per year, while the average of the other countries included in the study is much lower, 1.6 deaths per million inhabitants.
Even more impressive: Sweden was the only country in the study where deaths from firearms increased with respect to the year 2000.
At least three factors
According to Klara Hradilova Selin, the increase It is difficult to explain, but there are at least three factors that influence the wave of firearms murders in Sweden.
“The existence of criminal gangs, drug trafficking and the Lack of trust in the police in the suburbs ”, he specifies.
The BRA report indicates that more than eight of each 10 shootings are related to organized crime, a significantly higher proportion than in other countries.
This type of crime has become one of the biggest concerns of the Swedes. A recent survey by the SOM Institute at the University of Gothenburg found that at 90 % of Swedes would like to see harsher penalties for criminals belonging to gangs.
The risk factors mentioned by the Swedish researcher are repeated in other European countries , but without the same results. “There are also gangs and drug trafficking in other countries, such as France or England, but no other nation has seen the same increase in shootings as Sweden,” adds Hradilova Selin
“In England and Wales, for example, it can be said that there is a similar type of violence on the rise, but via another method : homicides committed with knives. ”
“ However, the context is similar: it happens in suburbs or depressed areas, the victims are young and there is often a connection to drug trafficking. ”
Most firearms deaths in Sweden occur in men between 20 and 29 years.
A “not easy” fight
Håkan Jarborg, a police chief in southern Sweden, explains that the fight against the increase in violence in Sweden “is not an entirely simple task.”
“Crimes are difficult to investigate. Surviving victims rarely participate in the progress of the investigation and witness statements are often very rare, ”he told the Göteborgs-Posten , one of the main newspapers in Gothenburg.
Following the most recent wave of violence in Sweden that has already caused about 30 deaths so far this year, the Swedish government announced in late August that it would seek to change national security laws to allow make it easier for the police to spy on suspected gang members.
“We want to consider giving the police authority another key tool to prevent new shootings “, assured the Minister of the Interior, Mikael Damberg, in a press conference on 27 of August.
“We will do everything in our power to fighting gangs. ”
A problem of integration
Another BRA report on crime in Sweden published This month yielded alarming results that have sparked an intense debate on immigration in the country.
According to the new study, those born abroad and their children are between 2.5 and 3 times more likely to be suspected of a crime than those born in Sweden to Swedish parents.
A 30% of men born in Sweden but whose fathers were born in Africa were suspected of crimes between 2015 and 2018.
For West Asia, which includes Middle East , the same figure was 22%.
While for Swedes whose parents were born in the country the figure was just 4.8%. Within all this, it should be noted that not all police suspects are guilty.
According to the Swedish journalist Håkan Boström, these figures show “clearly” that Sweden has a “ difficult problem ”of integration.
“ The most active groups in the area of crime originate in the countries from which Sweden has received a large number of refugees: Middle East and Africa. ”
“ Is poverty what causes gang culture, drug abuse and poor school results ? Or is it the culture of gangs and poor school results in combination with parents’ difficulties in settling down that causes poverty? ”Asks the journalist in an article published at the end of August by the Göteborgs-Posten .
The great challenge for the next government
The Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, plans to leave office soon and his Social Democratic Party has the arduous task of electing to a new leader who can convince voters that they can stop the wave of gang violence.
Meanwhile, critics of the government do not miss the opportunity of using crime as a weapon to reach the electorate.
“The security state is completely dark, but together we can make Sweden safe again, “Oliver Rosengren, Växjö councilor of the Moderate Party, said in May.
” A gu Erra against gang crime awaits the next government ”.
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