Warm hugs, hot rage for refugees
Sweden welcomes them, but backlash brews in Europe
STOCKHOLM — The refugees dined by soft candlelight, allowing their cold, road-weary bodies to sink into plush velvet couches as they feasted.
Omar Hassan took one look at the cozy scene — the product of hours of effort by volunteers hoping to make the new arrivals feel welcome on their first night in Sweden — and knew he was home.
“The people of Sweden are very good,” said the 34-year-old, fresh off a 4,000-mile journey from his native Iraq. “I want to make my life here.”
But behind the warm embrace, a different reaction to refugees is brewing in Sweden. In this Scandinavian country famous for its progressive politics, a party with roots in the neo-fascist fringe has surged toward the top of recent opinion polls with a defiantly hostile message to refugees: Those on their way to Sweden should stay out. Many of those already here should go home.
The growing popularity of the far-right Sweden Democrats mirrors a backlash being felt across Europe as the continent reckons with a refugee crisis that shows no sign of abating. The impact can be seen in country after country, with far-right parties hammering away at authorities deemed too permissive in allowing those fleeing war and persecution to find a home in Europe.
Anger over the refugee influx is increasingly fueling violence, as it appeared to do over the weekend when two Swedish schools that were being converted into shelters for asylum seekers burned down in what police said were suspected arson attacks.
Meanwhile, the backlash is already having an effect at the polls. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party achieved its highest-ever vote share in municipal elections this month while in Switzerland on Sunday the ultraconservative Swiss People’s Party won a clear victory after campaigning against asylum chaos.
In Poland, a nationalist party whose leader has warned that refugees will bring “parasites” and “cholera” to Europe is expected to triumph in a vote Sunday. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approval ratings have dropped as Germany has accepted a historic number of refugees. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been strengthened as his government has rolled out barbed wire to keep them out.
“In terms of popularity, the real winners of this crisis are almost exclusively on the right,” the Eurasia political consulting group recently concluded.
Perhaps nowhere is the phenomenon more striking than in Sweden. The country has taken in more refugees per capita than any other in Europe in recent years.
But now the Sweden Democrats have shattered that consensus — and are reaping the political gains.
“We need to send the signal that people wanting to come here are not welcome,” said Markus Wiechel, the party’s 27-year-old point person in Parliament on migration.
Morgan Johansson, the justice and migration minister, has insisted that the government would not succumb to the demands of the far right, defending the country’s open-door policies as both a humanitarian necessity and a benefit to a country that needs skilled workers.
“These are people who are assets for Sweden,” he said.
Yet he also acknowledged that the country is reaching the limits of what it can handle, and may have no choice but to tighten its policies in the face of an influx this year that is expected to bring more than 150,000 asylum seekers to a country with a population of less than 10 million.
The pace of new arrivals has accelerated dramatically in the past month, rising as high as 10,000 a week and forcing the government to take desperate measures to fulfill its promise to provide asylum seekers with housing beginning on the first night after they apply for protection.
“When we were at 3,500 arrivals a week, our plans were stretching thin,” said Mikael Ribbenvik, director of operations for the Swedish Migration Board, the government body in charge of caring for asylum seekers. “But we’re well beyond planning now.”
The Sweden Democrats party has benefited from fears about the strain refugees place on Sweden’s social welfare system — and has fed them.
“When people say that one culture can live side by side with another, it’s a lie,” said Dennis Dioukarev, 22, one of the leaders of the party’s youth wing.
Yet just a mile away from Dioukarev’s office, a challenge to that view was underway. At Stockholm’s Central Mosque and the adjacent Katarina Church, volunteers were preparing to welcome the latest batch of refugees.
Before they teamed up, church Vicar Olle Carlsson said he had been warned that the mosque was “a place for terrorists. But this is helping us see each other. We work hand in hand.”