Authorities in Sweden have been accused of mislabelling explosions and bombings and classifying incidents as “damage” in order to distort the true extent of explosions across the country.
Swedish Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson took to Twitter on Thursday to state that bombings in the multicultural city of Malmö had decreased by 40 per cent in the last two years despite other statistics showing a large rise in bombings across the country.
But according to the alternative news website Samhallsnytt, several explosive incidents in Malmö over 2019 were classified by police as injuries or simply as damage.
In January, an explosive that was detonated between two taxis in the city was declared to be “damage,” while in April an explosion at a school was logged as an “injury.”
An explosion at a residential building in June was also considered an “injury.” Broadcaster SVT reported that the explosion was not counted on their list of 2019 explosions because the damage caused by the blast was too minor.
Some Swedes reacted to Johansson’s Tweet with scepticism, including user Pater Ohman who accused Johansson of selecting a small portion of statistics on purpose rather than addressing the national trend.
He said the minister was sweeping the situation “under the carpet.”
The accusations of manipulating statistics come only weeks after employees of the Swedish Crime Prevention Council (Brå) claimed they had been pressured by members of management to manipulate crime figures for political reasons.
“If results were not liked, then there was censorship, organisation of results, dimming of results, and highlighting other parts of a study that were not as sensitive or could show a positive result,” an employee told researchers at Linköping University.
In 2016 soon after the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, Varg Gyllandar of the Stockholm Police claimed that officers practised a form of self-censorship when it came to migrant sex attacks at music festivals.
“We didn’t cover up, of course we didn’t. But we didn’t tell. And there are so many things we don’t tell because we have so much information, so many things going on,” Gyllandar revealed.
“Well, I think we all carry a bit of self-censorship; that we are afraid of discussing these question because you can appear like a racist. This is a cultural thing for us. We do go there… that’s maybe a problem,” he added.