Why are bombs going off in Sweden?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Last month in Sodermalm, a gentrified part of Stockholm, an explosion tore through an apartment block. Residents were left shocked and the bomb squad was called out. That night two more explosions happened in two other parts of the city. In fact, since the beginning of 2019 there have been over 100 explosions in Sweden. Right wing commentators have spoken about violence in Sweden before and often say that the stories aren’t being reported on because the media doesn’t want to undermine multiculturalism in a country that’s renowned for being socially liberal. In this episode we speak to Maddy Savage, a journalist living in Stockholm, who tells us what’s behind the rise in the number of explosions. We also talk to Christian Christensen, a journalism professor at Stockholm University, to find out whether Swedish media are covering up the violence. Presenter: Matthew Price Producers: Alicia Burrell and Duncan Barber Mixed by Nicolas Raufast Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.6	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.2	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.8	Every day we ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.0	Today why are bombs going off in Sweden?
0:27.0	So I saw this thread a couple of weeks ago on violence in Sweden. It's the sort of thing that gets
0:36.4	mentioned occasionally online. Often it seems by right-wing outlets, President Trump's even
0:41.6	famously picked up on it as well. And what's generally
0:44.9	written alongside stories about the violence is that it's not being
0:48.9	reported. There's this narrative that the truth is somehow being hidden from us, that the violence is being
0:55.3	carried out by immigrants, that the liberal media don't want to talk about it because they don't
1:00.0	want to undermine multiculturalism in Europe. Now there is obviously something
1:05.7	going on so we got Maddie Savage on the line from Stockholm. She's a freelance
1:10.6	journalist there she used to work at the BBC and she started by telling us about one night a few weeks ago
1:17.0	when there were several explosions.
1:20.0	There was an explosion in a place called Siremown on the 17th of October a mild
1:25.8	autumn night by Stockholm standards and it was actually the second explosion one of
1:30.0	three to take place that night. It's a neighborhood I go to often. It's about seven minutes on the bus from my office and to paint a picture of what it's like. This is a working-class area that's been gentrified in the last 10 years. It's got a reputation as a place that's popular with
1:47.0	hipsters, a lot of vintage stores, delicatessants, craft beer bars, there's a British fry-up place that I go to when I get homesick.
1:54.0	Many of the buildings are small compact departments painted in mustard and terracotta
1:59.5	colours and the explosion happened at 220 in the morning.
2:05.0	The noise was so powerful that it was captured on the phone of a 29-year-old man who was living in apartment a couple of blocks away. He and his girlfriend were using an
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