‘Jihad! Jihad!’ Migrant gang turns Swedish city into war zone
From the Express and the Swedish edition of The Local. I think the Local is still trying to put a good face on this; diversity, vibrant, high-jinks, sort of thing. The boy who took the video is a newly qualified journalist so he still has a lot to learn.
A VIOLENT gang of migrants turned a Swedish city’s New Year’s Eve celebrations into a “war zone” and chanted “jihad” as they sent fireworks into the crowds.
Photographer Freddy Mardell was planning on enjoying an evening out on Saturday when the mob launched their rampage in Malmo. Describing scenes of horror, the Swede said one thug was calling for “jihad” while standing on top of a car in the city centre.
Mr Mardell told Friatider: “An Arab jumped on the roof of a car and yelled ‘Jihad! Jihad!’ repeatedly. Swedish teenagers gathered in a large group to avoid being robbed.” Continuing, the photographer claimed police, who were out in force as NYE celebrations in the area are known to get out of hand, were too afraid to leave their cars. “Malmo is a lost city,” Mr Mardell added as he said even journalists decided to leave out of fear for their own safety.
One journalist reportedly said: “Staying here isn’t worth it. I’m not risking my life for this.“
Jash Doweyko-Jurkowski’s video from Möllevångstorget square in Malmö shows rockets exploding around him and being shot towards groups of people on New Year’s Eve, as revellers watch on and film on their mobile phones. “Where I stood in the square I’d estimate around 20-25 people were shooting rockets, but it’s important to point out I was mostly standing in one place. There were several other places in the square where it was happening,” Doweyko-Jurkowski told The Local. “When I moved to Malmö I always heard that ‘Möllevången’ is a bit like a battlefield on New Year’s Eve, that it’s standard there and more or less a tradition.”
Doweyko-Jurkowski think that even if people are well aware of the risks involved in going to the square to celebrate, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t change. ” . . . in my opinion, this is a public place, and it’s important that people should feel safe across their city, it’s the city’s responsibility to ensure that,” he insisted.
Doweyko-Jurkowski, who studied journalism, said that watching how the video has spread and been interpreted differently depending on the media outlet has been a useful exercise. “It was good training for me as a new journalist to be in the middle of the chaos and film it, and also to experience how the left and right sides of the media took it and tried to make a political point out of it,”
This is his video. The fireworks are obviously being used dangerously and one wonders why such misuse is permitted in a climate where health and safety regulations are rigorously enforced in other areas.
Nils Norling, a press spokesperson for police in the south of Sweden, confirmed to The Local that the square has a reputation for its New Year’s Eve celebrations.
“I don’t know for how long exactly but it has been happening there for many years. People shoot fireworks in an unsafe way, straight ahead and down into the ground,” he said. “It’s known that you can’t guarantee your own safety if you’re there on New Year’s Eve. There’s a risk you could be hit with a rocket. . . It’s also the case that when police are there they can be a target for someone who wants to shoot a rocket at them, so it’s difficult for them to police.”
So there you are; Swedish police admit that they cannot guarantee a citizen’s safety in a public place on New Years Eve.
Skåne Police’s Norling emphasized that he doesn’t think irresponsible use of fireworks is limited to Malmö. Recent reports of more than 50 cases of rockets being shot at police, public transport and emergency services in western Sweden support that notion.