Sweden Riots: Tracing the link between Delhi Pogroms and Malmo Riots

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On Friday, Violence befell upon the Swedish city of Malmo where over 300 people had gathered to protest against anti-Islam activities. Although, this might come as no surprise, for India has already been through such a tragedy in March 2020, when Delhi pogroms scrutinised the safety of many Muslim communities under the pretence of NAA. Not to mention, even the institution failed to take any step regarding this scenario and instead decided to turn a blind eye to the entire massacre. Various reports also suggested that protesters threw objects at the police, burnt car tyres and even Petrol Pumps.

  • How did the violence in Sweden begin?

Protests in Malmo began after a copy of the Quran was burned on Friday by members of the far-right Danish party StramKurs. What happened was, earlier in the day, the party’s leader RasmusPaludan was denied permission to hold a meeting in Malmo about “Islamization in the Nordic countries”, where it was rumoured that the Quran would be burned, according to the report of the Swedish newspaper ‘Aftonbladet’. Paludan was invited by Swedish artist and provocateur Dan Park, who has previously been convicted of incitement against ethnic groups.

  • Who is RasmusPaludan?

Paludan is a Danish politician and lawyer who founded the far-right party StamKurs in 2017 and was noticed for making anti-Muslim videos on YouTube, the contents of which included burning the Quran, at times wrapped in bacon, which he justified as a tribute to free speech or more like Freedom of Speech and expression. However, there’s no conflict over the fact that burning of Quran, an epitome of Islamic teaching and of religious importance for the Islam is quite a provocative and inappropriate stunt to pull off.

In June, Paludan was convicted on charges of racism for posting anti-Islam videos on his party’s social media channels, as a result of which he was sentenced to three months in jail and was disbarred from practicing law. In 2019, he was sentenced to 14 days of conditional imprisonment for delivering a racist speech. In June he was found guilty on accounts of racism, defamation and hazardous driving and served one month in jail along with two months of a suspended sentence.

Paludan was close to getting into parliament in the last Danish elections with a policy based on deporting more than 300,000 Muslims from Denmark and banning Islam.

On Friday, Paludan was barred from entering Sweden and was given a two-year entry ban.

  • The immigrant situation in Sweden

According to a report published by Brookings in March, Sweden has historically been a safe haven for refugees and, after Canada and Australia, has taken the most refugees per capita. Between 2013 and 2014, Sweden granted permanent residence permits to all Syrians in Sweden who sought asylum and since the beginning of the Syrian war, over 70,000 Syrians have come to Sweden. This situation can also be related to a certain level with the recent introduction of NAA in India which led to a devastating pogroms in Delhi. But the one thing that’s different is the fact that the refugees were welcomed rather warmly than in India, where both the sides are ready with sword in their hands to flow trails and rivers of blood.

However, as per the report, in 2015, Sweden received a record 162,000 applications for asylum primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and this influx of Muslim asylum seekers from war-torn countries has had a significant impact on Swedish politics.

The Swedish parliament’s third-largest party, the right-wing Sweden Democrats that has roots in Neo-Nazism, has created the perception among people in recent years that the influx of predominantly Muslim immigrants has led to a surge in crime and since 2015-2016 migrant crisis, many Swedes view refugees as putting pressure on public finances in a country that has one of the most generous welfare programs in the world.

A report in The New York Times reported that the large influx of immigrants into Sweden threatens the endurance of the country’s model that depends on its residents paying some of the highest taxes in the world and “understanding that everyone is supposed to work”. But a large number of immigrants, many of whom are not as skilled and educated, means that they will depend on welfare for years, something that Swedes are becoming increasingly wary of.

Significantly, in 2018, while the unemployment rate in Sweden was at 3.8 percent, it was at 15 percent among the foreign-born Swedish population. “Among supporters of the Sweden Democrats, these sorts of numbers are cited as evidence that refugees have flocked here to enjoy lives of state-financed sloth,” the report states.

Sweden’s support for right-wing parties is in line with the sentiment in the rest of Europe, which in recent years has seen a surge in support of populist parties including the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany and Vox in Spain that have brought the ideas of national identity and immigration to the forefront.

  • Are protests such as these common in Sweden?

In 2017, the Swedish police launched an investigation after riots erupted in a predominantly migrant area of Stockholm. The BBC reported at the time that rioters threw rocks, set vehicles on fire and looted shops days after US President Donald Trump made a reference to Sweden in a speech on immigration problems. In 2010, rioters burned down a school in the Swedish capital and threw stones at the police in a predominantly immigrant suburb after a group of youths were refused entry to a school dance.