Several members of the youth movement of the Swedish Left Party have accused police of facilitating racism by cracking down on gang crime in no-go areas in the city of Malmö.
Alma Lindén and Leia Wolke Wemmert of the Young Left claimed that police action could not solve the rising gang violence occurring in the city’s no-go suburbs, instead claiming that the current operations to crack down on violent gang crime were racist, Kvällsposten reports.
“The debate on crime is used today as a racist slogan on immigration and integration issues. Politicians blame the people who moved here in the hope of a better life for the problems the politicians themselves create,” the authors wrote.
They went on to add that Operation Rimfrost, which began late last year to tackle rising gang violence, made ethnic minorities feel insecure and victims of racism, saying, “Many people feel that they can be called suspicious or even violent from the forces of law in their everyday lives, just because of how they look.”
“The police will therefore never contribute to more security in the suburbs, as they play a central role in racial oppression,” they added.
The city of Malmo has seen multiple gang-related shootings over the last year, including in December when a 25-year-old was shot dead. The young man’s older brother is a local gang leader and was previously convicted of murder.
A poll released in December claimed that just eight per cent of Swedes thought the Social Democrat-led government in Stockholm could solve the rising problem of gang crime across the country, which also has seen more than 250 explosions and bombings in 2019.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has claimed that there is no link between the rise of gang violence and mass migration.
“The segregation is because there is too low employment and too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result,” he said in November.