Salim Iskef just bought a house and his upcoming wedding was the highlight of the life he was building in Sweden, a decade after the victory of the war in Syria.
Instead, hundreds of people reported to church on Thursday, where he was supposed to get married in July to attend his funeral.
“We decided how many children we want to have,” said Kareen Elia, Mr. Iskef’s fiancée.
Mr. Iskef, 28, was one of 10 people who killed a man on Tuesday who started a shooting at the Adult Educational Center in Orebbro. The Swedish Prime Minister called him the worst mass shooting in the history of the country.
The shooting left the land stunned, trying to understand how a nation in peace and known for its high living standards has one of the The highest rate of weapons violence in the European Union.
In recent years, Sweden has revised her once -understandable asylum policies, and many of the Swedes have peeked into immigration and accused her of growing crime and violence. It is an attitude, in turn, the popularity of anti-immigrant politicians, primarily on the right.
For some immigrants, a massacre to Orebbro – apparently committed by the Swede – in the center visited by migrants, campus Risberg, enhanced the feeling that their adopted country no longer felt welcome.
“When we came to Sweden, it felt like a safe country; we could adapt to society,” said Mrs. Elia, who also escaped from Syria. “But we no longer have the same sense of security. Things are constantly happening.”
In 2015, Mr. Iskef arrived from Aleppo, Syria, quickly learned Sweden and found a job at a passenger agency. When Koronavirus hit, he enrolled in Campus Risberg. For many migrants, the center has become a path in Swedish society, language and education.
Orebbro, a Swedish capital, was constantly more diverse because Sweden absorbed waves of newcomers: refugees from the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, and then from the wars in the Middle East and the horn of Africa in this century. Between 2016 and 2018, as many as 10,000 people moved to the city, said Erik Blohm, head of Urban Planning Orebbro.
As the city’s demography has changed, so did their services. Campus Risberg once used to be a high school two miles from the city center that closed in 2016 while the students decreased. In 2017, he re -opened as an adult educational center that offered free Swedish immigrants, as well as training for jobs ranging from construction to child care and teaching under a high school diploma, said Mr. Blohm.
The city recognizes that the key to the success of immigrants “integrate people and make them work,” he said.
While growth opposed the decreasing indigenous population, some fourth became full of new arrivals that could not afford to housing elsewhere, and were encouraged by the crimes by criminal crimes in Sweden. Vivalla, an area on the outskirts of the city, is one of the most variety of Orebbro communities and one of those that police categorized as a vulnerable neighborhood with increased safety threats.
This week, residents gathered at the community center there to express their fears and frustrations.
A large part of the neighborhood conversation was about the reaction that the attacker was an immigrant, “someone who looked like one of us,” said Cissi, a young man who asked her surname not to be used for fear of retaliation.
The resentment of the young people he works with, who know that “the right is very active,” she added. “In society, they do not feel welcome because of what they look like.”
Police did not publicly identify the attacker, who found dead besides 10 others, nor did he share any details about a possible motive. Swedish news identified him as Rickard Anderson, 35, who lived alone in an apartment near the school. The New York Times did not independently confirm his identity.
The shooting encouraged discussions about the violence of weapons and the wars of gangs that encouraged drug trade. Sweden started holding national figures on shooting less than nine years ago, during a criminal wave. In 2017, there were 281 shots, the first year was collected; The number reached 391 in 2022 and then fell to 296 2024, According to police data.
Government on Friday announced the plan To pull strict weapons laws, which makes it difficult to access a semi -automatic weapon. It will also improve police and medical checks in licenses.
The new legislation of weapons has already been planned on the basis of the 2022 investigation findings. After the Orebro attacks, the legislators went to the quick monitoring of the measure.
Police investigators have said this week that they are found Four firearm licenses suspected. At the scene, police said, they found the body of an attacker with three weapons, including what seemed like a rifle and a large munyci cache.
“We do not know the motive of this perpetrator, but we understand that one of the consequences is a fear among migrants,” said Christer Mattson, director Segerstedt Institutewhich studies violence encouraged by prejudices at the University of Gethenburg, Sweden. “And we have to let that fear become part of that discussion.”
At vocational faculties across the country, migrants feel more vulnerable after the attack, said Michael Williams, a member of the Board of Directors of the Swedish Refugee Support Network, known for the Acronian Farr. The attack has made a sense of discomfort that migrants and asylum seekers already feel in Sweden.
Ten years ago, Sweden proudly took tens of thousands of refugees, passing Europe from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan. But that Generosity has been gone soon As migrations progressed by Sweden’s public resources, a nation of 10.5 million people and outraged with resentment towards the newcomers.
The 2022 elections produced a conservative administrative coalition of Swedish moderate, liberals and Christian Democrats, all sides that accepted politics Limited migration,, Advantages of CAP for migrants and creating a stricter path according to integration.
The coalition needed the votes of Swedish Democrats, nationalist, antimigrant right -wing parties, in order to receive majority support and form a government. Swedish Democrats remain outside the Government, but with some influence on it.
The new government has passed legislation Targeting criminal gangs, the laws that Mr. Williams said disproportionately affects the migrants and asylum seekers, who often live in areas with great crime.
The country moved far from its former obligation right to asylumwhich made refuge for those who flee the war. Sweden New immigration policy is difficult in family migration and describes immigrants who have no explicitly right to remain as “Shadow society.”
“The parties say they want integration, but their policies are pushing to prevent integration,” Mr. Williams said.
