At a press conference following the mass stabbing attack by an Afghan migrant in Vetlanda, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven claimed the incident was not a migration issue.
Prime Minister Löfven made his remarks in response to a tweet from the populist Sweden Democrats, who said that the government should enforce a ban on migration that creates a social, economic, or cultural burden on the country.
“This is not a migration issue that the Sweden Democrats want to make it. Now we have a very serious incident in Vetlanda. Where innocent people are hurt, where their relatives are deeply worried,” Lofven told the media Nyheter Idag reports.
Löfven went on to say that he was waiting for the police to investigate the incident and that he would look wait for investigators to state possible motives behind the attack.
“Then I think that we should focus on ensuring that those who are to face trial should end up in court and be sentenced for it. That’s what it’s about now,” the Swedish Prime Minister said.
For years, Prime Minister Löfven has repeatedly denied any link between gang violence and mass migration.
In 2019, he blamed gang violence on other problems like unemployment, saying: ” 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.”
In September of last year, however, Löfven seemed to make a U-turn on his previous statements after admitting that there was some connection between migration and rising violent crime levels in Sweden.
A study published last month by researchers at Lund University revealed a direct correlation between migration and rape attacks. The study noted that 59.3 per cent of the convicts were first and second-generation migrants.