Another night of wild incidents took place in southern Sweden on Saturday, as tensions continue unabated following rallies by afar-right party that uses extreme rhetoric and plans to publicly burn a Koran, according to the Guardian.
According to police in the town of Lanzkrona, more than 100 young - mostly men - set up a barricade on a city street and began throwing stones and burning bins and vehicles after the decision to "move" a planned meeting of the Danish party Stram Kurs from that area to nearby Malmö, about 45 km away. Late in the evening the situation calmed down somewhat in the town, according to a statement by the local authorities, and fortunately there were no injuries in Lanzkrona. At the Stram Kurs event that finally took place in Malmö , party founder Rasmus Paludan gave a speech to a few dozen people, while a small group of counter-demonstrators threw stones at those gathered. The police intervened with pepper spray and Paludan himself was hit in the leg with a stone, but in the end there were no serious injuries. However, the riots continued in the city with fires in bins, "stone pelting" arrests and barricades.
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Kim Hild, a police spokeswoman in southern Sweden, had said earlier on Saturday that the permit to hold the rally in Landscrona could not be revoked, as in Sweden the level of abuse of free speech to take such a measure is too high. The right of demonstrators to express their opinion is very important and something too extreme must be done to be ignored, Hild said on Swedish television.
Tensions and incidents between counter-demonstrators, far-right protesters and police had already started last Thursday in Stockholm and other cities where Stram Kurs protests were planned or took place. On Friday night, street fights broke out between party supporters and counter-protesters in the city of Erebro, where the Danish party, with its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, planned to publicly burn a Koran. 12 police officers were injured and 4 police cars were set on fire during the riots and videos of scenes of chaos made the rounds on the internet.
Source: Proto Thema
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