Immigration worries loom over Sweden’s election campaign
“THEY take out the glass windscreens so people won’t shatter them,” says Karl Robbjens, nodding at a bare tram stop in Hjallbo, a poor suburb of Gothenburg. Mr Robbjens, who is of mixed Swedish and Libyan parentage, grew up on a housing estate in this immigrant neighbourhood. To an outsider it looks as immaculate as most of Sweden, with its carefully tended vegetation and flagstone-paved shopping square, but Mr Robbjens paints a rougher picture: “I used to get my ass kicked all the time.” He points out the school where his friends broke windows, and the apartment block where a friend’s sister was stabbed to death.
On August 13th some 20 cars were set on fire in Hjallbo, among nearly 100 burnt in the Gothenburg area that night. Two suspects were arrested. Another who fled to Turkey was picked up there. Swedish police think a Kurdish gang may be responsible. Torching cars is a hobby for young criminals in Gothenburg; police say 172 have been burnt this year, down from 237 in the same period last...