Salim Iskef had just bought a house and his next marriage would have been the highest point of the life he was building in Sweden, a decade after fleeing the war in Syria.
Instead, Thursday, hundreds of people showed up in the church where he had to get married in July, to attend his funeral.
“We had decided how many children we wanted to have,” said Kareen Elia, Mr. Iskef’s girlfriend.
Mr. Iskef, 28, was one of the 10 people killed on Tuesday by a man who started shooting in an adult education center in the city of Orebro. The Swedish Prime Minister called him the worst mass shooting in the history of the country.
Filming left the country stunned, trying to understand how a nation in peace and known for high living standards also has one of the highest rates of armed violence in the European Union.
In recent years, Sweden has revisited its asylum policies once welcomed, with many Swedes who have tightened immigration and the fault for the increase in crime and violence. This vision, in turn, has increased the popularity of anti-immigrant politicians, mainly on the extreme right.
For some immigrants, the Orebro massacre – apparently committed by a Swedish – in a center frequented by migrants, the Raffbergska campus, has strengthened the meaning that their adopted country was not felt more welcoming.
“When we came to Sweden, it looked like a safe country; We could adapt to society, “said Mrs. Elia, who had also escaped Syria.” But we no longer have the same feeling of security. There are things that always happen. “
Mr. Iskef arrived in 2015 from Aleppo, in Syria, quickly learned the Swedish and found work in a travel agency. When the Coronavirus hit, he enrolled in Campus Rivbergska. For many migrants, the center had become a way for Swedish society, through language and education.
Orebro, once the capital of Sweden shoemaker, has grown and has become constantly more diversified since Sweden has absorbed waves of new arrivals: refugees from wars in the Balkans in the 90s and then by the wars in the Middle East and in the horn of the Africa in this century. Between 2016 and 2018, as many as 10,000 people moved to the city, said Erik Blohm, head of Orebro’s urban planning.
As the demographic data of the city change, even its services. The R demBergska campus was once in the high school two miles from the city center that closed in 2016 while the students reduced. In 2017, it was reopened as an adult education center that offered free Swedish lessons for immigrants, as well as training for jobs ranging from construction to children’s care and classes to a high school diploma, he said Blohm.
The city recognizes that a key to immigrant success is to integrate people and make them work, “he said.
While growth counted a native population in decline, some neighborhoods have become crowded with new arrivals that could not afford houses elsewhere and have been afflicted by the criminal bands that feed the growing crime of Sweden. Vivalla, an area on the outskirts of the city, is one of the most diverse communities of Orebro and one of those classified by the police as a vulnerable neighborhood with intensified security threats.
This week, the residents gathered in a community center there to express their fears and frustrations.
Much of the speech in the neighborhood concerned what would have been the reaction if the assassin had been an immigrant, “someone who looked like one of us,” said Cissi, a young worker who asked that his surname was not used for fear of punishment.
There is also a growing resentment among the young people with whom they work, who know that “the right is very active”, he added. “Welcome to society are not heard because of how they seem.”
The police did not publicly identify the armed man, who was found dead in addition to 10 others, nor did he share any detail on a possible reason. The Swedish news identified him as Rickard Andersson, 35 years old, who lived alone in an apartment near the school. The New York Times has not independently confirmed its identity.
The shooting pushed debates on armed violence and group wars fueled by drug trade. Sweden began to maintain national figures on the shootings less than nine years ago during a wave of crime. There were 281 shootings in 2017, the first figures of the entire year were collected; The number reached the peak at 391 in 2022 and then went down to 296 in 2024, according to police data.
On Friday, the government announced a plan to strengthen the already rigid laws of weapons, making access to semi -automatic weapons more difficult. He will also improve police and medical checks in license applications.
The new weapons legislation was already under planning, based on the results of a 2022 investigation. After the attack of Orebro, the legislators moved to quickly follow the measure.
Police investigators said this week that they had traced four firearms for suspicion. On the scene, the police said, they found the assassin body with three weapons, including what seemed to be a rifle and a large cache of ammunition.
“We do not know the reason for this author, but we understand that one of the consequences is the fear between migrants,” said Christer Mattsson, director of the Segerstedt Institute, who studies violence stimulated by the prejudice at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “And we must allow that fear of becoming part of that discussion.”
In professional colleges of the whole country, migrants feel more vulnerable in the wake of the attack, said Michael Williams, a member of the board of directors of the Swedish network of support groups to refugees, known with the acronym Farr. The attack aggravated the sense of discomfort that migrants and asylum seekers already feel in Sweden.
A decade ago, Sweden has proudly hired tens of thousands of refugees, broadcasting in Europe from wars in Syria and Afghanistan. But that generosity was soon decreased while migration tended the public resources of Sweden, a nation of 10.5 million people, and the resentment closer towards new arrivals.
The 2022 elections produced a coalition of conservative government of moderate, liberal and democratic Christian of Sweden, all the parts that had embraced policies to limit migration, limit the benefits for migrants and create a more rigorous path towards integration.
The coalition needed the votes of the Swedish Democrats, a nationalist and anti-immigrant party on the right, to win the support of the majority and form a government. Swedish democrats remain outside the government, but with a certain influence on it.
The new government has approved laws aimed at criminal gangs, laws that Williams have said that migrants and asylum seekers are striking, who often live in high crime areas.
The country has moved away from its previous commitment for the right to the asylum, which made it a paradise for those who flee the war. The new immigration policy of Sweden is hard for family migration and describes immigrants who do not have the express right to remain as a “shadow society”.
“The parties claim to want integration, but their policies are pushing to make integration impossible,” said Williams.