Europe12 September, 20263 min read
Sweden Holds Sunday Elections Amid High School Attacks And Gang Violence
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Sweden votes on Sunday amid rising gang violence and crime concerns. Södertälje high school shooting Aug 17 injured a pupil, two 14-year-olds detained.
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Sweden’s security election
Sweden is holding elections this Sunday against a backdrop of a security turn, with crime and gang violence described as having permanently transformed the political landscape. On August 21, in the small town of Fagersta, population 13,000, 180 kilometers northwest of Stockholm, an 18-year-old student dressed in a black cloak, masked, helmeted, and armed with a sword attacked peers at a high school during the electoral campaign, killing a 17-year-old girl and injuring three other people. In Södertälje, a few kilometers from Stockholm, El País and El País describe a shooting at the doors of a high school on August 17 that left a teenage pupil injured and two 14-year-old girls detained, stirring the campaign for this Sunday’s elections.
Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said, “Although we have reduced shootings by 80%, the violence is still there, bubbling beneath the surface,” as the right-wing government coalition formed after the elections four years ago sought to reduce violence. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and other party leaders went on site after the Fagersta attack to pay their respects, as most parties canceled meetings during the legislative campaign.
Voices on gangs
Maryam Sasveir, a 33-year-old near the educational center in Södertälje, said, “The government boasts that the situation has improved a lot nationwide, but I live with as much fear as four years ago,” after a March bomb exploded at dawn less than 20 meters from her home. In Södertälje City Hall, Social Democratic councilor Elof Hansjons warned that measuring the power of the mafias by shooting figures is a miscalculation, saying, “Many people assume that fewer shootings automatically mean less organized crime.” Hansjons argued that “The strongest criminal organizations are not interested in violence, because it attracts attention,” while his adviser Nasif Kasarji described a shift toward money laundering, social fraud, or the black market in real estate.
Rickard Holz, a police inspector and head of the joint operation of about a dozen agencies, said, “When we focus only on shootings, we are actually just treating the symptoms of the disease,” and added that the police work with authorities responsible for taxation, customs, or economic crimes. The campaign’s security focus also includes legislative changes, with the age of criminal responsibility lowered to 14, a reform described as adopted last Thursday.
What’s at stake
Beyond shootings, El País frames the debate around organized crime’s financial engine, with Nasif Kasarji saying the national debate “talk[s] much less about economic crime, though it is the fundamental engine of the criminal gangs.” A police report from November last year estimates 67,500 people in Sweden with some linkage to criminal gangs, and says 17,500 would be “active members,” numbers described as having continued to grow since 2022. In the first eight months of this year, El País says there have been 48 gun attacks and 12 fatalities, while in 2022 there were 391 shootings that left 62 dead, figures used to argue that organized crime remains very present.
In parallel, franceinfo describes a security turn that includes preventive hearings of minors under 15 and tougher prison sentences, with the right-wing coalition that came to power in 2022 with support of the Sweden Democrats making the fight against crime its priority. The election campaign’s stakes are therefore tied to whether the government’s hardened penal code, expanded police powers to intercept communications, increased the number of officers, and a larger budget can reduce violence and disrupt gang recruitment.