Fires and rioting in Stockholm suburb

Immigrant violence in Europe continues to grow in major metropolitan areas.

Alain Bachellier

Being told one cannot attend a school dance can often lead to some feelings of rejection, anger, and outrage for a group of teens, usually ending in a shouting match with school officials. For Somalians in Sweden, however, it leads somewhere much more violent.

After being denied entry to a school dance, a group of Somalian immigrants (whose ages are unreported, but are referred to as “youths” by BBC News) went on a violent rampage throughout Stockholm, flipping cars, throwing rocks through windows, attacking a nearby police station, and ultimately burning the school building to the ground in a display that might shock even Los Angeles.

Up to 100 “youths” are speculated to have been involved in the riots. The mob formed on Monday shortly after a group, most likely unaffiliated with the school in question, were told they could not enter a school-sponsored dance. There are no reports of angry words exchanged between the Somalians and the Swedish school officials, only that the former became extremely violent after being told to leave the premises.

Immigrant violence has been a growing problem throughout Europe, especially amongst the large numbers of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, though less frequent among immigrants from Pakistan, India, and other parts of Asia. In France in 2005, several weeks of civil unrest rocked the city of Paris as Algerian mobs roamed the streets burning cars and buildings and attacking native French as well as each other, and a smaller series of riots took place just last year following the suicide of an Algerian in police custody on Bastille Day. These dwarf the recent occurrence in Stockholm, but the Somalian riot in Sweden nevertheless shows that immigrant violence is increasing and spreading throughout European countries as little is being done to curb the displacement of native Europeans.