Following the spiral of violence witnessed since Christmas which so far has seen some 20 shootings and explosive detonations across Sweden—mainly in the Stockholm area—that have resulted in at least two people losing their lives, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) called this past weekend’s wave of violence as “among the worst” to hit the country in a “very long time.”
While speaking to the Swedish state-run broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT) on Monday, January 24th, the center-Right prime minister, who only assumed high office several months ago, did not mince his words, referring to those responsible for the violence, namely gang-related groups, “the domestic terrorists of our time.”
A report from the Stockholm-based newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) stated that since Friday evening, alone, “there has been a detonation in a stairwell, three shootings at homes, and a murder of a 40-year-old man in Solna.”
Kristersson, despite telling the public that police occupy a position of control in terms of awareness, said that the rising gang violence at the moment is so severe that it cannot be controlled by the country’s security forces.
The prime minister called for the police to be provided with additional tools to solve gang-related crimes, while at the same time affirming his trust in their abilities, telling the broadcaster: “I don’t doubt for a moment that the police are doing everything they can with the tools they have.”
“The police are doing what they can to prevent the escalating violence, but far-reaching and time-consuming measures will be required to get rid of gang-related crime,” Kristersson added.
In 2022, fatal shootings in Sweden climbed to 63, an increase of 40% from the previous year—and a level not previously seen in the country’s history. It exceeded the country’s previous record set in 2020, also a European record, when 47 people were murdered with firearms, as The European Conservative reported, citing official figures from Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
By comparison, among other Nordic countries, four murders were carried out with firearms in Norway, four in Denmark, and two in Finland.
In an effort to confront the out-of-control violence in the capital, nearly a hundred police officers from all regions of Sweden will be sent to Stockholm to act as reinforcements for the local police.
Furthermore, the government, along with the supporting national-conservative Sweden Democrats, has authorized an investigation into the possibility of establishing police visitation zones and the application of anonymous witness programs to help curb the violence, which appears to get worse by the day.
Speaking of the possible establishment of these new and unprecedented counter-gang crime measures, Kristersson argued that “[Sweden] has come so far in this development that we have to do things we have not done before, these are our time’s domestic terrorists.”
