The support is heart-shaped in red granite. The boy in the picture adorning the stone is not smiling. He looks straight into the camera. The mouth is closed. The tea light in the gray front lantern has burned out. It has been many years since Ardiwan died. So long that weather and wind are about to erase the date of death written in gold under his name. 1.1.2012. First New Year’s Day almost twelve years ago. The boy in the grave was only fifteen years old. He had celebrated New Year’s Eve with his family, but was most graciously allowed to be out with his mates for a little while longer after the New Year’s rockets had stopped. Minutes later, the shots fell. Ardiwan died in hospital a few hours later. The murder is still unsolved. SHOT AND KILLED: It was outside this low-rise block in the district of Rosengård in Malmö that Ardiwan was shot and killed. Photo: SVT Ardiwan was my first encounter with gang violence in Sweden. I never knew him, but the name has stuck. It was winter 2012. In Malmö there had been six murders in two months. It felt new and it was terrifying. People were shot and killed. Most of it could be linked to rivalry between criminal gangs. But not everything. The police fumbled blindly with a culture of secrecy that had taken hold. No one wanted to be questioned by the police. and in any case not a witness in a trial. Thus, most of the murders at the time have remained unsolved. It is therefore difficult to know how many were innocent, accidental victims. No one deserves to die like this. But there is a difference between actively seeking out criminal networks that you know are at war with others and being killed because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. EXPOSED: For many years, Rosengård in Malmö was considered perhaps the worst district in Sweden, with a number of active violent environments in a relatively small area. Now it is primarily in Stockholm and Uppsala that the wave of violence is raging. Photo: BJORN LINDGREN / AFP And now there are many graves that should not have been there. Ariana is buried in Botkyrka south of Stockholm. She was shot and killed in 2020. 12 years old. A completely innocent and random victim. In 2018, Ahmed Obaid was shot and killed at a bus stop in Malmö. He had just started high school. The dream was to become a doctor Yuusuf Warsame was only eight years old in 2016 when someone threw a hand grenade into the apartment in Gothenburg where he and his family were visiting. Yuusuf died. Luna Mandic was four years old and had been with her father and two of his friends on a fishing trip. In Torslanda, the car they were in exploded. Both the men and Luna died this summer evening in 2015. The list is infinitely longer. REMEMBER: Ardriwan became a face in numbers in a dismal statistic. Photo: SVT For me, Ardiwan became a face on what were otherwise numbers in a statistic or anonymous silhouettes on newsprint. There was something about the fifteen-year-old’s story that touched. I don’t know if it was because of the group of friends photographer Gunnar Bratthammer and I met at the grave when we went to cover the wave of violence in Malmö that time in 2012. It made an impression to see teenagers standing and wiping tears, sniffing in front of the picture of their friend in the cemetery . But it might just as well have been the sense of injustice that lay in it all. Why did a fifteen year old have to die? One who sought no danger. Who just wanted to do like most young people. Being out. just a little more …Maybe it was both. WAVE OF VIOLENCE: See Dagsrevyen’s report from the wave of violence in Malmö in 2011/2012. Ever since those winter days in 2012, I have occasionally thought about the fifteen-year-old lying in the grave in Malmö. Who would he have been today? Had he fulfilled any of the dreams he had when the New Year’s rockets lit up the sky over Malmö on the last day of the year in 2011? He would have turned 27 this October. Because it’s so easy to forget that. For all of us who in one way or another deal with murder. Or death. It becomes numbers so crazy fast. MALMÖ: Ardiwan is buried in this cemetery. Killed in the gang war in 2012 Photo: Joakim Reigstad / news “A record number of dead”, we say and look seriously into the camera. Behind each and every one of those numbers there is a story. Behind each of those numbers there is a mother or father who will forever have a lifelong sorrow. There is a little sister who in a few years will only have a vague memory of her big brother. There is a school class where there is an empty desk. A sports team that lacks a left defender. Behind each of those numbers is a bottomless despair. I know we can never tell all the stories. But sometimes it is important to stop a little. In the search for the latest news about the perpetrator or the attempt to find a witness who has something to tell. The wave of violence currently affecting Sweden has many and complex causes. I’ve talked a lot about it being about power and honor. Drug markets. About revenge. About how the young people are recruited. About the police investigation. Penalty levels and policy measures. It has almost become routine to describe bombed-out residential buildings or tell about young people who have died. And I always try to do it with the necessary professional distance. MURDER: The wave of violence currently sweeping Sweden has claimed the lives of twelve people in September alone. Several of these had no links to the criminal networks. Photo: NTB One can quickly, and perhaps a little unconsciously, think that all the violence that occurs in Sweden affects hardened criminals who are well aware that they have stepped into a criminal racetrack. With the risks it entails. But what we have seen right from the start is that innocent people are affected. Some because they happen to be related to a gang member. Others because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. During at least thirty years, and probably longer, many very active criminal circles have emerged in Sweden. So many that it has ended in open conflicts. It is no secret that much of what happens in our neighboring country is about a form of system failure over all these years. MINISTER OF JUSTICE: The Swedish Minister of Justice, Gunnar Strömmer (M) has had a lot to answer for in recent weeks. Photo: NTB But it is not the case that everyone who is unemployed in Sweden ends up in a criminal racetrack. It is a small number. A tiny blood alcohol level. It is not the case that all immigrants commit serious crimes. It is a small number. A tiny blood alcohol level. Which god you believe in, which country you come from or which school you go to, does not explain why you become a criminal. Research has shown that failed integration policies in Sweden for many years have led to parallel societies, outsiders and segregation. Most politicians also agree. Unemployment and not least economic problems make it easy for the criminal networks to recruit new criminals with promises of quick money, status and belonging in a community. Although they are few, they become very visible when they send innocent people to the grave. And before the vicious circle is broken, many more tombstones, such as the heart-shaped one in red granite, will be mournfully erected. In their quiet way, they tell the stories we might otherwise forget. About all the lives that were unnecessarily cut far too short.
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In a cemetery in Malmö, there is a grave that should not have been there – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
