Avalanche - The Anarchist correspondence zine Avalanche - The Anarchist correspondence zine 2 | Page 23

Social tension and
anarchist intervention in Sweden
Contribution from UpprorsBladet - July 2014
Somehow desolete, with a sense of self-satisfaction in
being so, you find the humble landscapes of Sweden in
the far North of Europe. Little seems to be known about
this nation when one attends international contexts, far
less when the contexts concerns anarchist activities and
projects. We thought to change that and give you our picture of the context we were socialized into.
The we in this case is the project of UpprorsBladet
(Swedish for Insurrection News/Newspaper), which
started off as an anarchist journal in 2011. The focus
has since the start been to spread insurrectionary ideas
along with other influences that forms our struggle and
our projects – ideas that are left little or no space in the
broader radical environment of Sweden. It has also been
to gather not only accounts of radically concious attacks
on the existent but to make the overall tensions in society
more present and dangerous. The aim of the magazine
has been and still is to be a street paper but since the
people around the project are so geographically spread
out, this continues to be a challenge.
Starting from the picture of Sweden as a calm and harmless place, we can quickly asure you that although there
exists a great pacified part of the population – living
under the fear of crossing a red light, eventhough it in
fact is not illegal – this is not a correct picture.
The Husby Riots
In the early Summer of 2013, Sweden was suddenly allover the international news with footages of burning cars
and riot cops being attacked in the suburbs of Stockholm.
The focus of the media was on how this could happen in
such a peaceful corner of the world – famous for its social peace. Hundreds of cars was burned, 32 cops was injured and roughly a million euro less in the State’s pocket.

The point of escalation for these riots was, as in many
other cases, when a man was shot by the cops as they
attempted to arrest him in his home. It took however
some days from the killing point to the point of fire and
stones. Days of extreme tensions, rumours and uncertainty. Both the cops and the population in Husby were
sitting on needles. Then one night a cop was conducting his usual harrassment of the segregated youth and it
seemed as if he was clueless of the high level of tension.
He took on himself to harrass a group of youngsters. You
hear it on a published recording of his radio communication, how he confidently entered the situation on his own
and minutes later, how he flees and calls for backup.
Meanwhile parts of the local population are calling in
fires on different locations to the the emergency line,
some even about the fleeing cop. Still not clear about
the situation, a decision was made to send in a smaller
riot squad into the area. In the beginning the riot squad
randomly confronted any youngsters hanging around
in their search for the disorderly ones and were really
offensive and violent. This attracted more people and
soon the squad aswell had to leg it.
From this point on it was a precipitous escalating development. As long as the cops managed to reach the area
they entered with great violence onto anyone who they
saw as a threat and soon enough they decided that they
could not enter the area anymore because of the great
ammount of people attacking them and the fire brigade
with stones, setting buildings, cars and stuff on fire on
widely spread locations.
The news of these riots and the instigation of the media,
made sure that the riots spread to other suburbs and
even so other cities. It lasted for days in some places
and in Husby for more than a week.
There are several points that makes these events interesting but even more making them complicated. For that

| 23 |