Award-winning war correspondent Magda Gad has tweeted from Mosul that the war-torn city is safer for women and more peaceful than Sweden’s capital city.
“There’s no law on the Islamic veil here, and it’s safer for a lone woman to be outside than Stockholm,” the war journalist said on Twitter.
Asked by another user to clarify whether she “feel[s] safer outdoors in Iraq than Stockholm”, the Expressen reporter — who has been covering the fight against Islamic State in Iraq since June last year, said “Yep”.
Gad said Stockholm on a weekend evening is “much worse than any night in Iraq”, in response to a suggestion by the user ‘Per Anders Englund’ that it “can’t be easy being a good looking woman” in Sweden’s capital with “groping” men about.
In another tweet, the multi-award winning journalist described Iraq as “quiet, apart from the war”.
“In cities unaffected by fighting, it’s very quiet and no one bothers you when you walk the streets,” she wrote.
For her war coverage in Iraq, Gad has been nominated for an INMA Global Media Award in the Best Use of Social Media category, where she is competing with finalists including U.S. TV channel NBC.
She also co-founded the Blank Spot Project, a news site focused on long-form reports from places with very little or no journalistic coverage.
The Swedish establishment has been keen to counter the image that the country is beset with crime after U.S. President Donald J. Trump highlighted how its “having problems like they never thought possible” as a result of its open border migration policies.
Last month, just hours after Sweden’s prime minister attacked the president for linking mass migration with rising violence, riots broke out in a suburb where a majority of residents were born overseas.
The riots, in which cars were set ablaze and shops were looted, resulted in the Stockholm suburb looking “like a warzone” according to a journalist who was at the scene.