Thursday, February 23, 2017

Meanwhile in Malmö: What's Really Happening in Sweden?

What is actually happening in Sweden?

by Jake Hanrahan - VICE News


February 23, 2017

[World News - Malmö in Sweden is at the centre of an international debate about crime and refugees.

The debate started after Donald Trump referred to a non-existent "incident" in Sweden in a speech in Florida last week.

VICE News's Jake Hanranhan was in Malmö last month and is keen to shed light on what he found when reporting there.] 

Thread: Both left and right are talking a lot of nonsense about the situation in #Malmo. I was there four weeks ago, reporting on the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ahmed Obaid, an Iraqi-Swede immigrant with a bright future ahead of him. Here’s some actual info for anyone not interested in the shrieking leftist eye covering or racist right wing exaggeration that is surrounding #Malmo atm.

Ahmed (police, family & gang members all agree he was innocent & not affiliated with gangs) was one of three murders in Malmo in Jan 2017. In that month, there were 13 shootings, a small IED explosion and a hand grenade thrown into the lobby of a police station.

Statistically this was a sharp increase in violence. People pretending there's no problem with gang violence in #Malmo need to get real.

The problems in #Malmo stem from many things. One big issue is how the Swedish government seems to have pushed its large migrant population in #Malmo into a corner and tried to forget about them. This, coupled with the lack of employment and easy access to weapons across from Denmark and from the Balkans, has of course created a problem.

The unemployment rate for foreign-born men between 16 and 64 in #Malmo is 30%. That compares with 8% nationally. High unemployment means more chaos, as is pretty much the case universally. This, of course, is not exclusive to migrant communities. A lack of skilled work, discrimination, housing issues, failed assimilation and ridiculously lenient laws toward violence (sorry lefties) all plays a role in the very real problems Malmo is facing.

They don’t have enough officers, are under resourced & with Sweden's laws their power to lock up criminals they do catch, is diminished. There’s also a huge lack of support for the police in #Malmo from the Swedish government.

Police in #Malmo seized ~600 weapons in 2016. Some semi-auto rifles & hand grenades. From ’16 there’re also 13 currently unsolved murders. Whilst reporting in #Malmo, I spoke to the family of Ahmed Obaid, a gangster parading around the streets in a bullet proof vest, and with a policeman about all of this.

They all agreed, that yes, there IS a big problem in #Malmo and it is being largely ignored.

Unfortunately it’s now blown up (excuse the pun) in a way that isn’t currently shedding light on anything of substance. You have the right wing pretending there are no go zones (there’s aren’t, that’s bullshit), non-stop rape and daily explosions, and you have the left who’re pretending it’s all milk, honey and racist propaganda.




Jake HanrahanVerified account
@Jake_Hanrahan

Journalist & filmmaker. VICE News and HBO, mostly. Conflict, crime, politics. jpjhanrahan@gmail.com

Midlands, UK
jakehanrahan.com 
 
Joined September 2009

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