Six women have been killed in just five weeks in Sweden, reigniting debates about domestic violence in a country usually praised for its gender equality.
…In Flemingsberg, a low-income Stockholm suburb packed with tower blocks clad in primary colours, a woman was stabbed in the apartment she shared with four young children. The man arrested on suspicion of her murder is someone she reportedly knew well.
…One major political sticking point is whether the recent violence should be connected to Sweden’s recent wave of immigration. Swedish police don’t register criminal suspects according to ethnicity, but prosecutors say several of the men facing trial have non-Swedish backgrounds, and that’s been used as ammunition by anti-immigration parties.
In a televised party leader debate last week, the leader of the nationalist Sweden Democrats Jimmie Akesson called for a crackdown on what he described as “imported values” that sanction violence against women.
Sweden’s Gender Equality Minister Märta Stenevi says that Sweden does have a problem with so-called “honour crimes”, which are committed to protect or defend the supposed reputation of a family or extended community. But she believes labelling violence towards women as an “immigrant issue” is “really, really diminishing the problem”, describing violence against women as “deeply, deeply rooted” throughout Swedish society.
….Opinions are strongly divided in Flemingsberg, where Swedish pine forests intersect with a heaving, concrete, shopping precinct.
“People who live here, they don’t want to accept like Swedish laws,” says one 25-year-old woman who asks not to be named. (Emphases mine – Ed.)
