By the time you read this, the Swedish police may have charged 24-year-old Mijailo Mijailovic with the murder of
Or
then again, maybe not. The investigation proceeds with a curious,
dreamlike quality. When the deadline for holding him was up, Mijailovic
himself, echoing the national lack of will to action, "agreed to be
detained" for a further two weeks while the government sought more
evidence, saying he didn't really fancy his chances of getting released
anyway.
Last September, pro-EU integration, euro enthusiast Anna Lindh went shopping in an exclusive department store in the center of
Out
of the blue, as she stood on the up escalator, a man raced up the
stairs with a knife, grabbed her and started stabbing in the chest,
abdomen and arms as she tried to defend herself. Lindh, according to
reports, managed to struggle into a nearby boutique, but by that stage,
the fatal damage had been done. The man fled down the escalator and
onto the street. He discarded several pieces of outer clothing as he
ran. His DNA was on his clothing. His image was on film from the
store's security cameras.
He
left behind a woman bleeding from multiple stab wounds to her liver and
other vital organs, and a store full of bemused onlookers who even then
failed to be stirred into action. No other shopper or security guard
tried to stop the killer as he fled. Admittedly, tackling a deranged
man with a knife is formidably frightening, but it beggars belief that
not one man was stirred into action by the sight of a woman being
stabbed to death in front of his eyes. Witnesses were later reported to
have been "shocked," as well they might have been.
It
is part of the human condition that when one man takes action in a
fraught situation such as this, he does so in the subliminal confidence
that other males will pile in. Yet this wasn't the case in
The
Swedish citizenry looks to the government to solve every human dilemma.
Taxes are high, but all, including the chronically unemployed, are
provided with a middle-class standard of living. It is "fair." They are
complacent and cosseted, constantly told their welfare state has made
In
what other Western country have two senior government figures (prime
minister Olaf Palme, 13 years ago, and Lindh in September) been
murdered in the center of the nation's capital? And
When
human societal norms are disturbed, through warfare or famine or
leached away through social engineering, the cohesion of society
suffers. Free-floating despair lurks in the subconscious and a sense of
anomie -- bottomless despair and disconnection -- seeps in.
All-embracing
socialism has sapped the life, and sense of individual responsibility,
out of Sweden's civil society, leaving the creepy passivity that
allowed fellow shoppers to stand, frozen with shock, when someone was
attacked and murdered before their eyes. If the murder weapon had been
a gun, the inaction would have been understandable. A shot is immediate
and the noise is stunning. But controlling a struggling human being
while stabbing them repeatedly takes enough time for at least some
observers to have gathered their wits and been spurred into action.
Yet
no one made a move to save Lindh's life. Not even the friend who had
accompanied her on her fatal shopping trip. Of all the fellow human
beings in the mall, the sole defense of the Swedish foreign minister's
life was one woman at the top of the down escalator who shouted, "Stop
him!" to the floor below. Of course, no one did. And as Lindh lay on
the floor bleeding in the interim before the ambulance came, the
shoppers quietly dispersed, speaking in shocked, hushed tones.
Presumably the friend stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.
From
what I can gather, there has not even been any hand-wringing on TV
discussion shows lamenting the lack of action. It barely seems to have
registered. Is this conceivable in any other country?
Fearful
of being accused again of the ineptitude they displayed when Prime
Minister Olaf Palme was assassinated, the police snapped into action at
once and arrested the wrong man, a homeless 32-year-old. Despite having
had film from the CCTV that recorded the event, and the killer's
discarded outer garments and the discarded murder weapon, they arrested
someone, admittedly a known malcontent, who was sitting in a public bar
peacefully watching a football playoff on bigscreen TV with a crowd of
other people and who expressed mild surprise at being arrested.
After
a very Swedish, not too over-the-top, Diana-esque couple of days in
which they laid the now mandatory cellophane wrapped flowers at various
points throughout the city,
The evidence against Mijailovic has been gathered. DNA tests have been performed at a state-of-the-art laboratory in
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