Bad news has been pouring down the necks of the Swedes. The terrorist attack in Brussels against soccer tourists doesn’t even surprise everyone anymore, writes our Scandinavia correspondent Pirjo Auvinen.
Pirjo AuvinenScandinavian correspondent
Now Swedes are tested almost every day.
As I write this, the Swedish ministers are talking about the cable damage between Sweden and Estonia.
Yesterday, two Swedish football fans were shot dead and the third is fighting for his life in a Brussels hospital.
Yesterday afternoon, it became clear that the Swedish police suspect that a 16-year-old boy shot three people dead within 25 hours.
For Swedes, the world is no longer Peppilä, where the sun always shines and where feminist foreign policy is made.
Good-natured and prosperous Swedes have become targets and opponents in the war that the Muslim world has declared against Sweden.
The long night of Brussels
Stockholm Central Station is an excellent place to meet Swedes living in different parts of the country.
I almost fainted when the first passenger I stopped said he was coming from Brussels for a football match.
He told in detail the events of the night of the terrorist attack, how they had been stopped for hours at the football stadium, how everyone’s passports and flights home had been checked and how the journey to the hotel was in a police convoy. He was not afraid at the stadium, even though the perpetrator who killed two Swedes and wounded the third was still at large.
The man believes that he will continue to travel to matches from time to time, but without any signs of his Swedishness. At home, the Swedish politicians have not done enough for him, but stuck in party political bickering.
The man was calm and happy that he was already close to his home and family. However, the question about the effects of last night’s events on the future moved him.
Life goes on as usual
The others I talked about today were not at the center of events in Brussels. Everyone is shocked by the bloodshed, but perhaps not so surprised.
One lady also shared her opinion that she lives in Stockholm, where the atmosphere has changed in recent years. Now the hometown has gotten used to the fact that serious crimes are happening around. That’s why the attack in Brussels was not surprising.
This is exactly what the Swedish security police warned about in early autumn when they announced that Sweden would move from three to four on the terrorist threat scale.
No one is going to change their everyday life or life and be less Swedish in the future, only more vigilant than before.
The prime minister also said the same thing today Ulf Kristersson. According to him, this is not the day to announce stricter controls or restrictions.
Instead, in Kristersson’s opinion, a stricter stance must be taken on those staying illegally in the EU as a whole, and access to the Union’s territory must be tightened. The Brussels shooter has stayed illegally in Belgium and previously also visited Sweden.
And when I put a full stop to this article, Aftonbladet writes that the Brussels shooter has been imprisoned in Sweden, apparently with false papers, and deported from here to other places.