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The Swedish Model: Shantytowns and Squatters
Something interesting is happening in the Swedish city of Malmö. For months, some 500 Roma migrants, most from Bulgaria and Romania, have been illegally squatting on a private industrial property in the city, refusing to leave. Apart from illegally squatting on someone else’s land, the migrants have been causing a health and safety issue, leaving tons of waste (human and otherwise) and using hazardous gas to fuel stoves.
Today, after months of complacency from the Swedish government and the city of Malmö, the migrants are being forcibly moved by more than 800 police officers; and even though it’s still early hours, fighting and violent protests have started in and around the property.
This has become the pet issue for the ubiquitous left in this country, something I find distressing, to say the least. What they tend to forget is that the law has been completely derailed here, that property laws and private ownership are being overlooked (to put it understatedly), and that a separate society (read: slum) has been created on this lot, policed by young men who are keeping out the very society to which they claim to want to belong.
The people protesting the removal of these migrants are mostly middle-class youth who have never known what it is to work and earn something, and who assume that everyone can have everything for nothing. The man who owns this property knows better, though. He hasn’t been able to use his lot for almost a year because it’s been illegally occupied. Swedish society has failed him by allowing this to go on.
This represents a shame on Malmö, the local authorities, and the Swedish government. The world-view and illogic represented by the left-wing activist groups driving this agenda is unfathomable. They pretend to protect the underprivileged in the name of human rights, this by defending an degraded and unworthy way of living in the midst of a civilized society. Driving this is a generation that grew up having all social services handed to them, never once forced to ask how these luxuries were provided. What we have was made possible by our parents and the people before them. No respect for, nor awareness of that, would seem to be found among them. A society, its services, and its functions can never be taken for granted; it needs to be constantly reconstructed by its inhabitants.
The number of homeless children (among the Malmö citizens, not including migrants from the EU) is increasing rapidly. The main reason is lack of housing. The plan for the occupied area of Malmö is to build 2,500 apartments. But before that can be done, the owner, who hasn’t been able to use his land for more than a year, will have to pay a considerable part of the cost for cleaning the area (approximately 375,000 SEK, or USD 45,000) before he can start building. The main part of the estimated 2.5 million SEK (USD 350.000) cleanup-cost is paid by the Malmö taxpayers. Keep in mind that Malmö is the poorest city in the country, currently receiving a yearly bailout from the government to the tune of USD 600 million. It consistently scores at the bottom in ratings of income, education, employment, and quality of life. If the rest of the country stopped propping it up, the city would have a larger structural deficit than the entire country of Greece.
As for the migrants and the shantytown they have created in Sweden’s third-largest city, no consideration is ever voiced for the people who will have to do the cleaning up or pay the price for this catastrophe.
Sweden is often hailed as a model for well-being and family-friendly socialism, but the squatting migrants show us a sliver of the failure it has become.
Furthermore, this is yet another piece of evidence in the case against the EU. It proves the absurdity of our playing a desperate game of post-war-let’s-pretend, claiming borders and laws don’t matter — until both are overrun and overturned.
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This is such a shame. Not much I can say except sympathize.
Each protester take 10 squatters home with him or her.
Occupy Malmo. Zuccotti Park in Manhatten was also a private park and the city allowed the occupiers to squat there. I know it cost the city $3 or 4 million in overtime for the police but I’m not sure of the figures for cleaning up the park, which was pretty disgusting when the squatters finally left. Good luck to the owner of this property.
Annika,
So very well said. Nigel Farage has been telling the truth all along. It may seem radical, but the British exit from the EU may be the only shock treatment that will bring Europe to its senses.
Regards,
Jim
What exactly are Roma migrants? Are they native born Romanians and Bulgarians? Are they in Sweden for the welfare, doesn’t Romania and Bulgaria have welfare?A Reuters article said Sweden is planning to accept another 190,000 from the middle east, should Sweden be officially placed on the suicide watch?
I’m pretty sure they are the traveling ethnic group once called gypsies. But, that is not PC.
Thank you for reporting this – I am heartsick at what is happening to Europe. I hope they soon resurrect the spirit of their forebears and fight this invasion.
This felllow bids a personal goodbye to Sweden..
The one thing I learned in my role as a mom was to act quickly, to solve problems when they were little problems.
It is so hard to put this attitude into words.
My major complaint with Democrats has always been that they don’t act to prevent problems or to keep small problems from getting bigger. They have absolutely no executive skills whatsoever.
So a country run by that type of negligent thinking ends up with a disaster that could have been solved easily 450 squatters ago.
And our current president is the same. Which is why there are wars erupting everywhere.
Yo! ,Eds. Great blogger! – should be recruited as a Ricochet contributor.
Steyn was in Malmo recently. I wish I had seen more of Europe while it was still European. On Germany:
Sweden has only 10 million citizens, so expect that domino to fall sooner.
Oh, dear. I must confess that stories such as this make thoughts bubble up in my brain which make me wonder if I am becoming like my late father, self-described as “somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.”
What would dear old Dad have said? “If it were legal to shoot trespassers, they wouldn’t have this problem.”
And he would have been right. I’m not saying that the trespassers should be shot, but if the threat existed – a credible threat (which would require the right to bear arms) – I doubt that the trespassers would be there on private property.
By the way, the Roma, or Gypsies, or whatever they’re called – they have to be pretty high up on the list of pathological ethnicities/nationalities, don’t they? When you visit European museums, their children try to pick your pockets. A Gypsy stole my friend’s mobile phone using a distraction trick. This behavior is the rule, rather than the exception.
You make the assumption that those in charge *want* to solve the problem. The goal of ever larger government is an ever more dependent and complaisant populace. To the elite, the squatters are just inhabiting their natural place in the society. Yeah, maybe the goal is to have them not live in total squalor, because total squalor stinks and gets on your Bruno Maglis; but the hoi polloi are what they are.
As some of you may know, I’v been on a big Tino Sanandaji kick lately — he’s the son of Kurdish-Iranian immigrants to Sweden and he holds a PhD in economics and public policy from U Chicago. He has said elsewhere that Sweden will basically become one large Malmö. And, I think it safe to say, so will Germany in another generation or two. I recommend this recent article about Sandandaji from a Danish magazine, and I’ll quote the last part (from Google Translate):
Perhaps I’m a bit of a child. I would not rule out civil war eventually.
Annika, I read somewhere that Sweden has 55 police-designated no-go zones which are too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter at night, including police, ambulance, and fire services. I’m guessing the US has a handful of no-go zones, but not 55. These places cannot be mentioned in the Swedish media as that would be racist.
Is there any truth to that?