The increase in gang violence threatens to bring down Sweden’s left-wing government
In the southern Swedish city of Malmö, just over the bridge from the Danish capital Copenhagen, people have become accustomed to reports of gang-related shootings.
But on a recent Friday afternoon, just weeks before Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the violence came a little too close.
At the upscale Emporia mall, a 15-year-old shot dead a man and injured a woman in front of families shopping this weekend.
“I just went into some kind of survival mode and tried to get out as fast as possible,” said Louise Heegaard, a 40-year-old mother of two who witnessed the shooting. “But when I realized I wasn’t going to die, the shock came and I was both scared and sad.”
The incident prompted her to rethink her politics ahead of Sunday’s national election.
“I was so angry afterwards that I thought so many innocent people would have to experience something like that. I voted solely based on this,” she told The Telegraph.
An unprecedented rise in violent gang crime threatens to unseat the ruling left-wing Social Democrats after eight years in power, as voters turn to right-wing parties to address their concerns about law and order.
The issue has become one of the most important to many, according to surveys, an unusual development in a largely safe country where residents are usually more concerned about employment, education and health care.
But their concerns are not unfounded.