Around 200 people hurled rocks at police and set cars ablaze in a Stockholm suburb during the second day of rioting, which was triggered by the fatal police shooting of a man wielding a knife.
Dozens of windows were smashed, 10 cars and several containers were set on fire, and seven police officers were injured on Tuesday.
Six people were arrested early in the day, but two were released after questioning, police spokesman Jorgen Karlsson said.
Cars and containers were also set ablaze in Fittja, another Stockholm suburb, although police said it was not clear whether the two events were linked.
The unrest began Sunday night in response to the May 13 shooting, in which police killed a 69-year-old man who had locked himself in an apartment in Husby, west of Stockholm. Around 80 percent of the roughly 11,000 residents of the suburbs are first- or second-generation immigrants.
Police have refused to give the nationality of the victim.
Many local residents see the shooting as an example of police brutality, and the violence has stirred debate in Sweden.
The country, known for its strong welfare state and egalitarian society, has had the biggest surge in inequality of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country over the past 25 years, according to a recent publication by the global economic watchdog.
“This is not OK. We will not give in to violence,” Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said. “We must all help out to regain calm. The residents of Husby need to get their neighbourhood back.” Reinfeldt added that Husby has been going in the right direction during his seven-year tenure, with employment increasing and crime falling.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Husby, said that local authorities are doing their best to assimilate new immigrant arrivals. “Husby is not some slum that the state has abandoned,” he said.
The atmosphere was tense on Tuesday, with residents expressing both anger at police and sadness about the destruction. City workers were seen clearing the debris of a burnt-out container and documenting fire damage.
Reza Al Bazi, 14, and his friend Sebastian Horniak, 15, said they witnessed the violence throughout the night.
Horniak claimed he witnessed police firing warning shots in the air and calling a woman a “monkey.”
“I got upset yesterday because I saw police attack innocent people, they beat a woman with a baton,” he said.
Horniak’s claims of racist remarks were backed up by the organisation Megafonen, which represents citizens in Stockholm’s suburbs.
Prosecutors have launched an internal probe into the shooting. Police say they shot the man in self-defence because he attacked them with a knife when they broke down the door to an apartment where he had locked himself up with a woman.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
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As an aside it looks as though the “Religion of Peace” has struck in London. No doubt No 10 is busy this evening advising news editors on how to “responsibly” portray today’s events. Don’t use the “M” word!
Newsnight did a predictable propaganda special to reassure the sheeple.
John Reid said that this is not Islam but Islamicism. Nice propaganda line. So Muslimisation is fine is what he means. Today merely an aberration. Politico Carlile wants more interception of web traffic. We know what that is for. Why don’t they just put cameras in all our homes. The Muslim government stooge said Islam needs to ‘reclaim’ democratic values – reclaim? Farce.
So all is basically well under our wise rulers. Farcical!
Immigration is a curse. its like a cancer that will eventually destroy the body it infects. Sweden, like Britain, needs urgent surgery.
The word “blackout” is apt: I first read about these riots in the Wall Street Journal of all places. And the first TV report I saw was on the Russian TV channel “Russia Today”.
Why the complete silence from the British elite for the first three days or so of the riots? Very bizarre.
I never thought I’d begin to suspect that a Russian news service is more reliable than the BBC.
Islam is a disease of the mind. The Moslem is the carrier. Stop the carrier and you stop the disease.
if Swedish football fans had rioted for six nights it would have been all over our news every night with an untrue hint that it was extreme right wing elements behind it.as it was immigrants rioting the story is all hushed up here and you have to find out on a t.v. station called Russia today. my god this country needs the British Democratic Party.