Stockholm calmer but violence spreads outside Swedish capital

A nearly week-long spate of rioting spread outside Stockholm on Friday but authorities said police reinforcements sent to the Swedish capital had reduced the violence there, even though dozens of youths set cars and a recycling station ablaze.                 

The rioting - set off earlier this month by the police shooting of a 69-year-old man - continued for a sixth night in mainly poor immigrant areas in Stockholm.    
         
In a country with a reputation for openness, tolerance and a model welfare state, the rioting has exposed a fault-line between a well-off majority and a minority - often young people with immigrant backgrounds - who are poorly educated, cannot find work and feel pushed to the edge of society.                  

Two cars were torched in Stockholm but the city appeared to have had its calmest night since the trouble began.           

"It is a bit calmer. Of course, there are still fires," said Towe Hagg, a police spokeswoman in Stockholm.              

But in Orebro, a town in central Sweden, some 25 masked youths set fire to three cars, a school and tried to torch a police station, police said. An old empty building was set alight in the town of Sodertalje, less than an hour's drive from the capital.           

Pupils at a primary school in the Stockholm suburb of Kista - an information-technology hub that is home to the likes of telecoms equipment maker Ericsson and the Swedish office of Microsoft - arrived on Friday to find the inside of the small red wooden building had been burned out.                      

"In the short run, the acute thing is to ensure that these neighborhoods get back to normal everyday life," Erik Ullenhag, Sweden's integration minister, told Reuters. "In the long run we need to create positive spirals in these neighborhoods."          

The police said they had called in backup from the cities of Malmo and Gothenburg. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt held an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the crisis.    


REUTERS