And I don't know if it is the same in Sweden, but you are not really politically allowed to say what kind of people live in those neighborhoods. So again, nothing to worry about.
I've stayed on that friend's house for the whole of January, daily living there and haven't heard about a single crime happening. Asked my friend's flatmates just now and they laughed about it.
Same thing for a friend that lives inside what some maps label as "no-go zone" in Kista, nothing happened there at all for the past year.
So seriously, the alarmism here is very extrapolated compared to the actual risk. Compare to Belgium as you want but be a bit more honest about your utter ignorance instead of just a "And I don't know about Sweden"-trumpesque discourse.
Luckily there seems to be less attacks in the last half a year.
I think there's been more attacks, but here's a summary of some of them: http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-8517586 (Dec 2015, in finnish)
Look, I'm fully aware you need to panic, and I'm fully aware this need is being satisfied by a bunch of cronies standing to make heaps of money on your panic. Just know your fear is not justified and should not be the reason for aiding the raise of fascism in europe.
What I know is that these grenades came from the Balkans after the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, now why is it so common for it to happen in Sweden of all countries I honestly don't know.
One theory is that due to a quirk in the way the law is worded, grenades where not considered weapons, but rather a controlled explosive[0]. What this means in practice is that the punishment for smuggling hand grenades into the country is much much lower than the punishment for smuggling in guns. As the law is written, if you are first time offender caught with a hand grenade you're likely to get away with a fine.
[0] https://www.svd.se/fritt-fram-ta-in-handgranater-i-sverige
Semi-related: A significant amount of illegal firearms in Europe (including the firearms used in recent attacks) were sold legally in Slovakia as "deactivated acoustic expansion weapons" and then "reactivated".
It's kinda ridiculous when I see a map where they mark "Enskede" as a no-go zone.
The google results were mostly commentary, the only useful report I could get out of them was this one:
http://ciwnews.com/2017/02/16/2-africans-sentenced-for-assau...
"Aftonbladet" provided much more results, I stopped after the first two pages, which seemed to encompass Jan-Feb 2017:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/A1e8r/smash-and-grab-mot...
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/kgErL/inbrott-i-telebuti...
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/bP5Jk/pistolman-trangde-...
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/GRowx/god-morgon-det-har...
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/x2non/oppnade-for-hemtja...
(most of these are from january and february 2017).
Same thing in August last year in Husby (a suburb in northern Stockholm), 47 cars torched. Same suburb that saw the same violent riots and more than 100 cars torched in May 2013.
Was there a single riot like that in Sweden that does not involve immigrants? Were there any honor killings that don't involve immigrants from specific part of the world?
Simmilar pattern can be observed in France too.
The same is true about rape. In Sweden, the definition of rape and sexual abuse is incredibly broad. I know a person who got accused of sexual abuse by his wife because she said he had slipped up a finger in her vagina while asleep without her consent. Once. Several years ago. Can you imagine any other country where a case like this would ever be looked at even remotely seriously? Moreover, incidents involving sexual abuse are reported a lot more often, because everyone is a lot more informed about what consent means and what their rights are. It is highly unusual in the global context. So rape in Sweden is nothing like rape pretty much anywhere else in the world.
I could talk a lot more about these issues, but these two points are the most important to keep in mind when discussing crime in Sweden relative to crime everywhere else in the world.
As far as gun violence goes, the US almost turned into a no-go country as far as myself is concerned.
Who reports that people do that? Tabloid newspapers? They've been lying about that for decades.
After the 1989 Hillsbourogh disaster (where people died due to health & safety issues, and negligence from the police), tabloid newspaper The Sun wrote a full page headline accusing Liverpool fans of attacking police who were trying to save people. It was a complete fabrication.
"Those people" attacking our police/first responders is a common lie that sells tabloid newspapers.
E.g. Svenska Dagbladet (no fringe publication, a major newspaper): https://www.svd.se/ambulanspersonal-far-skyddsvastar
Of course, this is not unique. Plenty of American cities have the same: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/madi...
I live in Finland, where our criminal code actually has a separate crime called "infringement of freedom to political activity", for threat of violence or endangering well-being of others who express their opinion, participate a demonstration or set up an association for peaceful political activity. So attacking someone at a political rally is a worse crime than a random violent attack.
Of course it depends on the opinion, but I see nothing wrong with it in principle.
Lies are rampant. Especially racist anti-immigrant lies:
I wouldn't be surprised if every country has areas people claim are like that.
England: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3647355/Firefighters... Scotland: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/bonfire-nigh... Wales: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/youths-attacked... USA: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/12/01/at... Ireland: http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/watch-sickening-mo...
Those links are only to illustrate what people claim happen. They're not necessarily representative of what things are actually like. Talking to people who live in these places is just about the only way to get a good idea.
The youths are never charged from what I can tell, the police just disperse them. I assume this means the incidents don't go in to crime statistics.
That's one way of "bringing down violent crime", don't arrest the perps; that may be over-cynical.
> That's one way of "bringing down violent crime", don't arrest the perps
It is overly cynical.
The UK has two sets of crime statistics: police recorded crime and the annual crime survey.
Even the police recorded crime stats (which aren't regarded as statistically reliable) don't only rely on arrests, but include all reported crimes. So police arresting or not wouldn't affect the numbers.
But the annual crime survey (which is statistically reliable) doesn't rely on police recording.
I mean, who cares if there are 30 gernade attacks in Malmo [0] as long as overall deaths in Stockholm habe gone down by more than 30?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_S...
does anyone else find it strange how they keep jumping around in (what feels like arbitrary) years?
Yes it's true: there are pockets where Ambulances are stoned by local kids and need police escorts. That's not a vicious rumor. It's a tiny area (few blocks) of the country though. I'm sure many countries have terrible areas.
How our areas somehow turned on ambulance and firefighters is a complete mystery to me though.
It would help because those things are mostly done by the youth born there. Most migrants in a small (2sq miles although some like to extrapolate it to the whole country) community like Molenbeek (where most of those problems originate) are second generation or more. We are way past the point where it's a migration problem or where a migration stop would help.
I don't know how closing our borders or my absolute favourite "sending them back to their country of origin" (which will result in an infinite loop) will really help.
But then again for some we are not allowed to point to socio-economic problems, they pretend that it simply doesn't exist or it's the complete fault of the other side. What I often see in Belgium is the argument that Mohammed should find a job or that most are lazy.
But from the moment we the see the name on his resume or he shows up to do our garage door installation, it's a big "no-go" also. It's a vicious circle that works both ways.
Taking about the vicious circle, I heard of a company that basically discards any resume with a male Arabic name in it, because they had lots of problems with that group in the past, but not for the women. Too bad for the Mohammed who wants to do a good job of course.
Very hard problem, but it all starts with being totally honest about the situation.
> not really politically
> allowed to say what kind
> of people live in those
> neighborhoods
Wonder what America would be like today if they'd cleared out all Italian and Irish immigrants 100 years ago because of immigrant ghettos?
And you don't think that certainly more than half a billion africans would deserve to live a much better live than what is possible where they live now? Solution imho only can be to 'fix' those countries and 'fix' the birthrates.
Globalization also means that certain customs no longer are tolerable...
There are certainly places in Dublin where you might be more likely to get yourself robbed in, but beaten up for drinking alcohol or walking as a white person with a Muslim girl? Nowhere.
And where are you suggesting such a place does exist? In Sweden? If you have any links to reports of incidents like you're describing I'd love to see them.
And I can anecdotally state that I've witnessed attacks first hand in Muslim areas in both Belgium and France due to ideological reasons (e.g. a girl in my party was assaulted because she touched a man's arm and apparently shouldn't have). I've lived in the worst parts of Dublin and yeah, problems can arise, but they're non-ideological ones. Which means that you can avoid them by using general street smarts.
Who said there is nothing to worry?
> but you are not really politically allowed to say what kind of people live in those neighborhoods.
First, source for not allowed to say. Second, what do you want to say?
Sure you could blame Muslims for those no-go areas. But you need to demonstrate it. And demonstrate absent other factors like socioeconomic status, unemployment rate etc.
Most are forced to correlate crime and migration because they can't write online that the real thing bothering Westerners is the virulent growth of an anachronistic religion that makes both men and women subservient to an old book or wizard in the sky. Somehow we'll find a few fellows here defending the increasing percentage of women completely dressed as ninjas as something natural in modern societies. Neglecting the violence that happens to them when they don't dress that way.
HN, it's time to be honest. That's the real elephant in the room.
They're not migrants, refugees or any kind of ethnic minority though. Just poor and bored.