We Are Sthlm sexual assaults

The We are Sthlm sexual assaults took place in 2014 and 2015 at We Are Sthlm, a youth festival in the Swedish capital Stockholm. Police recorded the crimes but did not make them public.[1] Dagens Nyheter, the first mainstream source to cover the story, faced allegations spread on social media that they had been part of a cover-up to hide the story, something the newspaper's editor strongly denied.[2]

Background

Further information: Mass sexual assault

We Are Sthlm established as a summer music festival for youth in 2000 under the name "Ung08" with free yearly public concerts and events in central Stockholm.[3] The venture was successful and received support from Stockholm Municipality in 2003. In 2013, the festival was attended by 160,000 people and changed its name to "We Are Sthlm".[4][5][6]

Rapes were reported at Swedish music festivals at Arvika in 2006[7] and 2010,[8] Emmaboda in 2014[9] and Bråvalla in 2015,[10][11] At the Arvika festivals, the police publicized reports of rape but characterized both events as "calm".[7][8]

2014 and 2015 festivals

In connection to the 2015 festival, Sveriges Radio reported that sexual harassment had occurred that year and that festival had been plagued by the same problems for several years.[12][13] According to Dagens Nyheter this had been a problem since the festival started in 2000, but that the information was withheld due to concern for the reputation of the event.[14]

In 2014 and 2015, 38 incidents of sexual harassment at We Are Sthlm were reported to the police by female visitors at the festival, most of whom were under 15 years of age,[15] but the Stockholm police did not publicize the harassment and assaults reported in 2014 and 2015 in their press releases.[16] Police spokesperson Varg Gyllander later explained that the reason was that most of the suspects were young males of immigrant background or refugees and that the police was wary of inflaming the ongoing political debate about Swedish immigration policies and the prevalence of criminality among immigrants and refugees.[17]

2016 media coverage

On 9 January, an article by Lasse Wierup, crime reporter at Dagens Nyheter, published an article as a reaction to the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, especially in Cologne. Wierup pointed to the similarity of the German assaults to reports of incidents in Kalmar and at the We Are Sthlm festival in August 2015. Wierup was critical of the absence of media attention and posed questions on the reasons for the lack of attention and what it meant for the safety of women in public spaces.[18] The same day, the media outlet Nyheter Idag published an article that, based on information from a source that claimed to have tipped off DN during the summer, criticized Dagens Nyheter had chosen not to report on the We Are Stockholm assaults the previous summer.[19] The following day, Dagens Nyheter published an article criticizing the Stockholm police for withholding the information in their media communication, and pointed to this as the reason for not reporting on the assaults.[20]

The story received international attention, partly as it was broken shortly after sexual assaults in various German cities and the Swedish city of Malmö[21] over the New Year.[22] The Guardian reported that police and "the media" were alleged to have "deliberately under-report[ed]" the assaults in order to not increase anti-immigrant sentiment.[17]

According to one memo, police in 2015 were told to be vigilant of young men sexually assaulting women in the crowd, as the previous year such offences had been committed, mostly by migrants, including Afghans. David Brax, a scholar of hate crimes at the University of Gothenburg, hypothesised that police were concerned there would be revenge attacks against other migrants if the crimes were made public, but also predicted that a cover-up would vindicate the far-right's belief that the media do not report on migrant crime.[23]

National police commissioner Dan Eliasson ordered an internal review with the possibility of disciplinary action or criminal proceedings if police had committed any offences.[24] The Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, said that the women assaulted were victims of a "double betrayal" and promised to respond quickly to address the events.[24]

A 15-year-old boy was arrested on 11 January 2016 on charges of assault and sexual assault against two 14-year-old girls at the summer 2015 festival.[25][26]

Claims of a media cover-up

The Sweden Democrats, a right-wing populist anti-immigration party, claimed that DN had been made aware of the crimes, but did not report them because it would benefit the Democrats' agenda.[17] DN editor Caspar Opitz denied the party's claim, adding that it investigated the tip seriously but could not confirm it.[24] Answering questions, Opitz wrote that his staff made multiple attempts to investigate and even found that some of the information in the tip (for example, that large numbers of people had been arrested) was not true. He further stated that the scarcity of leads meant that not even alternative media were covering the story.[2] The Norwegian Union of Journalists, through interviews with a policeman and a psychologist, came to a conclusion that DN had buried the story.[27]

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that coverage of the assaults was followed by a multitude of racist comments on Facebook, including death threats and calls for revenge.[28]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Assaults at the Stockholm festival have never been fully investigated". Dagens Nyheter. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  2. 1 2 "Questions and answers on DN's handling of events in the Kungsträdgården". Dagens Nyheter. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  3. ↑ Ung is Swedish for "young" and 08 is the area code for the greater Stockholm area.
  4. ↑ "Publikrekord mer än en halv miljon besök på Stockholms Kulturfestival och We Are Sthlm 2013". Stockholms stad. 20 August 2013. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  5. ↑ "We Are Sthlm". Stockholms stad. Retrieved 2016-01-16.
  6. ↑ Sveriges Radio. "Ung08 blir We Are Sthlm".
  7. 1 2 Sveriges Radio. "Våldtäkter under festivalen".
  8. 1 2 Sveriges Radio. "Förutom våldtäkter lugn festival".
  9. ↑ David Isefjord (25 July 2014). "Våldtäkt anmäld på Emmabodafestivalen". Barometern.
  10. ↑ "Våldtäkter på Bråvallafestivalen". Aftonbladet.
  11. ↑ Helena Sällström / Omni (26 June 2015). "Flera våldtäkter på Bråvallafestivalen". SvD.se.
  12. ↑ Hannu, Filip. "Problem med sexuella trakasserier på festival för unga" [Problem with sexual harassment at youth festival]. Sveriges Radio. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  13. ↑ "Här är anmälningarna från 'We are Sthlm'". Expressen. 2016-01-13. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  14. ↑ "Stockholms stad kände till övergreppen i flera år". Dagens Nyheter. 2016-01-16. Retrieved 2016-01-16.
  15. ↑ "38 flickor utsattes för sexualbrott på festivalen". Svenska Dagbladet. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 2016-01-16.
  16. ↑ "Rättsexpert dömer ut polisens tystnad om Kungsträdgården". Dagens Nyheter. 11 Jan 2016. Retrieved 2016-01-16.
  17. 1 2 3 Crouch, David (11 January 2016). "Swedish police accused of covering up sex attacks by refugees at music festival". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  18. ↑ "Kvinnors rätt att festa säkert kan inte offras". DN.SE.
  19. ↑ English version
  20. ↑ "Övergreppen på festivalen i Stockholm rapporterades aldrig vidare". DN.SE.
  21. ↑ "Gäng ofredade kvinnor på nyår i Malmö". Sydsvenskan. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
  22. ↑ "Swedish police accused of covering up festival sex assault". Deutshe Welt. Reuters, AP. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  23. ↑ Bilefsky, Dan (11 January 2016). "Swedish Police, Accused of Cover-Up, Look Into Reports of Sex Assault at Festival". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  24. 1 2 3 "Swedish police probe 'cover-up of migrant sex assaults'". BBC News. 11 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  25. ↑ "Teen arrested after police 'cover up' sex attacks". The Local. 12 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  26. ↑ Malm, Sara (12 January 2016). "Teenager is arrested for sexual assault at Swedish music festival where police covered up attacks by migrant gangs as it is revealed two third of the victims were under 15". Daily Mail. Retrieved 13 January 2016.
  27. ↑ Øgrim, Helge (13 January 2016). "Overgrep mot unge jenter - halvt års taushet i svenske medier" [Assaults on young girls - six months of silence in the Swedish media] (in Norwegian). Retrieved 15 January 2016.
  28. ↑ Kerpner, Joachim. "'Sätt en kula i huvudet på dem'" [Put a bullet in their heads]. Aftonbladet (in Swedish). Retrieved 13 January 2016.
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