Swedish media has been devoting much attention to the deteriorating situation in the city of Gothenburg, with press reports admitting that local migrant gangs are taking over the role of the police in many areas and are controlling access to the city’s district. Now, the office of Law and Justice (PiS) Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński is pointing to prescient remarks he made in 2015 about Sweden’s no-go zones and the fact that he was ridiculed at the time he made them.
The situation in Sweden has been viewed with growing concern for the last few years, with murder and shootings becoming commonplace in public spaces, leading to growing fear from the public. Gothenburg’s authorities have even made the decision to attribute special protection to doctors and teachers in some areas, who are now being escorted to work, according to Polish outlet TVP Info.
Sweden’s top daily, Aftonbladet, writes, “For the past two years [in Gothenburg], murders, shootings and knife attacks have become an everyday occurrence.”
The Polish Press Agency (PAP) notes that the Swedish police emphasize that the scale of the violence is primarily due to the conflict of two gangs. Gothenburg is not the only Swedish city experiencing a crisis. Other cities have seen tragic killings, such as the shooting death of 12-year-old girl in Stockholm who was caught in the cross-fire of a drive-by shooting, igniting growing debate about the level of gang violence.
In Sweden overall, killings reached a record high in 2018 only to reach another record high in 2019. In 2019, a record number of people sought medical treatment for knife wounds.
In a May 2017, a survey conducted by Dagens Nyheter showed that of 100 suspects for murder and attempted murder using firearms, 90 percent of them had one parent born abroad.
Law and Justice (PiS) Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński had warned of such a scenario five years ago in the Polish parliament, when Europe was debating the issue of relocating migrants. Kaczyński said that the sudden increase of foreigners may turn out to be uncontrollable.
He pointed out that 54 zones in Sweden were out of the control of the state.
Kaczyński’s words from 2015 caused a massive uproar from the left in Poland and even in some international media outlets. Opposition politicians assured that the scenario he described would be impossible and interviews with foreign affairs experts appeared who claimed that the situation was stable.
Five years later, it turns out that the situation is even worse than Kaczyński described.
Michał Moskal, the director of Kaczyński’s office, commented that leftist media and opposition politicians must contest anything that the government says, and the same thing happened in 2015.
“We opposed illegal and uncontrolled migration which was being ignored. It was not about permanently closing Poland’s borders, but to admit only those people who could be verified. Western countries today created a situation in which they have no control over who is in their borders,” he told TVP Info.
Bomb attacks a symptom of Sweden’s woes
Sweden has also experienced new attacks that have never been seen in the country before, such as the incredible amount of explosions seen in major cities, with the BBC reporting that 2018 saw 162 explosions alone and another 100 more as of November 2019. The explosions are reportedly related to rival gangs using hand grenades and other explosive devices to intimidate rival gang members and their families. They have become so frequent that they even have led to an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the topic.
Paulina Neuding, writing on the topic for the Spectator, outlines just how new the attacks are:
To understand how Sweden arrived at this degree of normalization, consider the statistics: between January and June this year, more than 100 explosions were reported in the country, up from about 70 in the same period last year. A total of more than 160 suspected attacks with explosives were reported last year. There are no comparable figures available for earlier years because it’s such a recent phenomenon. Until recently no one would have thought of adding a column on bombings to the national Swedish crime statistics.
Wilhelm Agrell, professor of intelligence analysis at Lund University, has warned that the situation has become so dire that the integrity of the Swedish state is in jeopardy. “The state’s monopoly on violence, the actual token of a sovereign government, has been hollowed out bit by bit and no longer exists,” he wrote a few weeks ago. “The armed criminal violence is having effects that are increasingly similar to those of terrorism.”
A new report from the Swedish Defense University warns that clan structures in some immigrant areas are putting the Swedish justice system under “severe stress.” In these parallel societies, the Swedish state is weak, witness intimidation is systematic and ordinary citizens are pressured to submit to clan rule.
Poland, up until now, has avoided such a fate. Moskal pointed out that in the name of political correctness, countries such as France, Sweden or Germany has lost the kind of control Poland has over who enters the country.
He added that while a situation of gang wars is unlikely in Poland, the government must continue to use the mechanisms it has employed to control migration.
Sweden, known for its historically welcoming policy towards refugees, has soured on more migration, with polling showing that a majority of Swedes want to reduce migration in the country.
