A politician in northern Sweden has compared the actions of reckless tourists to terrorism saying that they “break and destroy like the Islamic State”.
Lars Jon Allas, a politician serving in the semi-autonomous Sami Parliament in northern Sweden, was reported to police over Easter weekend due to an altercation with tourists in which he allegedly threatened a guide with a knife. After the incident, the politician took to social media to declare tourists were as bad as terrorists, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.
“They’re just like terrorists, destroying everything we’ve got here. They only care about themselves, they break and destroy just like Islamic State,” Allas said.
“They kill our nutrition and our animals. They destroy everything in our culture. Companies do not even need permission for their businesses,” he added.
Sami chairman Per-Olof Nutti commented on Allas’s remarks saying: “Of course, it’s regrettable if it’s true. No one can support such a thing. As a politician, one must be extra careful about how to behave.”
Håkan Jonsson, the leader of the Sami Parliament’s largest party, slammed the comparison saying: “This shows that he does not have respect for other people and businesses. There are also many Sami living off of tourism.”
While Allas likens tourists to Islamic State members, the actual number of radical Islamic extremists in Sweden has grown dramatically in recent years. According to the Swedish security agency (Sapo), the number of violent radicals now numbers over 2,000, up from only 200 in 2010.
Swedish researcher Peder Hyllengren of the Swedish Defence College claimed earlier this year that the country had become a base for radical Islam and that Swedish extremists were part of vast international networks.
Hyllengren blamed political correctness and far-left activists for stifling real debate on the issue saying: “You risk being identified as racist in a way that you did not see in other European countries.
“There, this question was as uncontroversial as the importance of combating Nazism and right-wing extremism. But in Sweden, it took a long time before we could discuss jihadism in the same way that we discussed Nazism for a long time.”
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