Sparked by the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69 year-old man, traditionally calm-and-collected Sweden is suffering amid its third night of riots. It seems underlying tensions from high youth unemployment and rising nationalism against the nation's large immigrant population have been catalyzed by this seemingly unrelated event. As the Daily Mail notes [5], immigrant ghettos have been created where unemployment is high and there are few opportunities for residents with left-leaning commenters adding that the riots represented a 'gigantic failure' of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs - "We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future." An anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting unease about immigrants among many voters. What is driving this tension? After decades of practicing the 'Swedish model' of generous welfare benefits, the country has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy. Given Sweden's 24.7% youth unemployment, we wonder just what will happen to the 60% of unemployed youths in Greece and Spain when school lets out this summer?
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Brief clip below provides more color...
This can't end well!
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Via The Daily Mail [5]:
The disorder has intensified despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.
Last night, rioters attacked the police station in the Jakosberg area in the northwest of the city and set fire to 30 cars.
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Groups of youths also smashed shop windows and burned down a 19th Century cultural centre.
Gangs of up to 60 set fire to a school and a nursery and hurled rocks at police and firefighters.
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While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.
Some 15 per cent of the population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region.
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Among 44 industrialized countries, Sweden ranked fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.
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Via Al Jazeera: [10]
Around 200 people hurled rocks at police and set cars ablaze in a Stockholm suburb...
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Around 80 percent of the roughly 11,000 residents of the suburbs are first- or second-generation immigrants.
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Many local residents see the shooting as an example of police brutality, and the violence has stirred debate in Sweden.
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Horniak claimed he witnessed police firing warning shots in the air and calling a woman a "monkey."
"I got upset yesterday because I saw police attack innocent people, they beat a woman with a baton," he said.
Horniak's claims of racist remarks were backed up by the organisation Megafonen, which represents citizens in Stockholm's suburbs.
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