Gaël BRANCHEREAU & Camille Bas-WOHLERT -
Honour, debts, and prestige are serving as the pretext for an increasing number of deadly shootings that challenge the ideals of equality and social harmony on which modern Sweden was built.
“You strengthen your own gang by eliminating an external threat and you gain prestige,” Eddy Paver, a reformed former member of a biker gang, said.
Paver was long willing to pay the ultimate price in order to “belong” to a criminal gang which required absolute loyalty from its members.
“It’s about strengthening the sense of community and showing who’s the toughest,” the 47-year-old former convict explained. Last year more than 300 shootings resulted in 45 deaths and 135 injuries in Sweden.
While the overall homicide rate remains one of the lowest in the world, with one per 100,000 inhabitants according to police statistics, deadly shootings have been steadily rising and last year reached record levels.
This year is on track to create another unwanted record. In Stockholm the first six months of the year have seen as many killings as the whole of 2018.
Most of the shooters and victims are unemployed young men with immigrant backgrounds, under 30 years of age, living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and often without a high school diploma.
“If you don’t feel like you belong anywhere, you’re struggling with the language (Swedish), and you see these guys who sell drugs, they have gold chains, they drive fancy cars, they get to sleep with the girls. It’s not hard to find your way there,” said Paver.
Like in other European cities, you find many of Sweden’s struggling housing projects at the end of metro lines.
Other designated “vulnerable areas,” with elevated levels of violence are found in inner cities, as in Malmo in the south.
Buildings are generally in good condition, schools properly equipped and streets clean, but social issues, unemployment and a high proportion of foreign-born inhabitants lead to segregation, school drop-outs and drug trafficking.
“Some shootings are connected to the trade of narcotics, internal conflicts or when someone has been cheated out of money... But many times it can be about honour. You can get screwed over by someone in the same gang, fights over cliques or girlfriends. The level justifying a retaliation is quite low,” Gunnar Appelgren, police commissioner in Stockholm, said.
“Gangs have no institutional recourse to resolve conflicts... The motive for settling a score is not always important. It’s about saving face,” said Torbjorn Forkby, a Professor of Social Sciences at Linnaeus University.
The most badly affected areas are the capital Stockholm, and Malmo and Gothenburg, but violence has also started to spread to medium-sized cities.
The weapon of choice for gangs are Kalashnikov automatic rifles. Imported from the Balkans, they are available for between 2,500 and 3,500 euros (around $2,800 to $3,950), although they become “more expensive in the event of an open conflict,” according to Appelgren.
Sweden’s gang members have also been using grenades and explosives to settle their scores.
On June 7 a bomb placed in a bicycle shed destroyed the facades of two residential buildings, causing damage to over 200 apartments in the city of Linkoping, a two-hour drive south of Stockholm. Miraculously it caused no serious injuries.
Some efforts by authorities have helped reduce local tensions. The city of Malmo has adopted the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) programme, implemented in Boston in the 1990s though its impact is still uncertain.
— AFP
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