(Stockholm) Three people were shot and wounded in violent clashes in Sweden on Sunday between law enforcement and demonstrators protesting against a far-right group that prides itself on burning the Koran during its public gatherings, a said the police.
Posted at 1:17 p.m.
“The police fired several warning shots. Three people appear to have been hit by ricochets and are currently being treated in hospital,” police wrote in a statement.
The three injured, whose condition is not known, are also “under arrest, suspected of a crime”, it is specified.
This is the second such clash in four days in Norrkoping.
The first time, the demonstrators had protested against a rally of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam group “Hard Line”, led by the Danish-Swedish Rasmus Paludan, 40 years old.
On Sunday, they demonstrated again in view of another rally, which Mr. Paludan finally gave up.
In Norrköping, four people were arrested among the approximately 150 participants in this “violent riot”, during which stones were thrown at the police and cars were burned, said the police.
According to the health services quoted by the local news agency TT, ten people were hospitalized with minor injuries following these clashes as well as similar clashes in the neighboring town of Linköping, where “Hard Line” also gave up a expression.
Legislative candidacy
Bi-national, Rasmus Paludan, who intends to stand in the Swedish legislative elections in September but does not currently have the necessary signatures to apply, is currently on a “tour” in Sweden where he goes to neighborhoods with high Muslim population to burn the Koran there.
In 2019, this trained lawyer, who was convicted of racist insults, had already tried his luck in Denmark, his native country, where he had collected barely 10,000 votes.
Also a youtuber, he has caused incidents on several occasions in recent years. In 2019, he burned a Quran wrapped in bacon and was blocked for a month by Facebook after posting a photo conflating immigration and crime.
On Saturday, his rally had been moved from a district of Landskrona to an isolated parking lot in Malmö, the large neighboring city, in order to avoid overflows, but a car tried to force the protective barriers whose driver was later arrested . Mr. Paludan then burned a Koran.
Later, protests erupted in different parts of Malmö, with stones and Molotov cocktails being thrown at the police.
The circuit taken by the small group has generated several clashes between the police and counter-demonstrators across the Scandinavian country in recent days.
On Thursday and Friday, around 12 police officers were injured in the clashes.
Following these events, Iraqi diplomacy announced in a press release that it had summoned the Swedish charge d’affaires on Sunday.
She believes that allowing far-right supporters to demonstrate wishing to burn a copy of the Koran is an act “provocative for the feelings of Muslims and offensive for what is sacred to them”.
And she warns of the “serious repercussions” of this case on “relations between Sweden and Muslims in general, whether in Muslim or Arab countries, or in Muslim communities in Europe”.
In November 2020, he was arrested in France and then deported. Five other activists were arrested in Belgium shortly after, accused of wanting to “spread hatred” by burning a Koran in Brussels.