The Anti-Roma in Sweden

In recent years, the number of beggars from poorer European Union countries has risen in Sweden, many of them Roma from Romania.  Beggars are now positioned outside most supermarkets and metro stops in the capital, Stockholm, and in many small towns. Some live in encampments of tents and camper vans, while others are spending the harsh winter in the cars they used to travel to Sweden. Their presence has divided Swedes, with some calling for a law prohibiting begging and for beggars to be deported, and others urging authorities to support their humanitarian needs.

Erik Hansson, a researcher at Uppsala University said centuries-old anti-Ziganism, or prejudice against the Roma, is playing a role in hostility against beggars. "Some people say it's in their culture to beg, rather than work," he said. "They get provoked by seeing beggars who managed to travel all the way to Sweden, meaning that they must have had some money. That, some people say, doesn't give them the right to beg." 

In the last year, dozens of cases of harassment as well as physical attacks have been reported across the country. Incidents include people beating up, throwing rocks or spitting at, threatening or stealing money from beggars. There have been fires - widely believed to be arson - in encampments housing beggars in Stockholm and the southern city of Malmo. Swedish Radio revealed how a closed Facebook group, "No to beggars in Sweden", with about 3,000 members, celebrate harassment and attacks on beggars. On other online forums, beggars' encampments have been mapped with posts instigating attacks. The far-right Sweden Democrats, which became the third-largest party in the country's September polls, has used fiery rhetoric against the beggars, accusing them of belonging to organised crime networks and committing crimes in Sweden. The party wants a nationwide ban on begging.

Sjobo is the southern Swedish municipality where the party got the highest support in the parliamentary poll - 30 percent of the votes. A Swedish man n the town of Sjobohas been sentenced to four months in prison after he stole a tablet computer from his son's pre-school and handed it to a Romanian beggar in an attempt to frame her for theft. "This woman had all odds against her - no money, no permanent home, and there was a man who said he'd seen her steal an iPad," police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford told Al Jazeera. "But my colleague, a female police, felt that something wasn't right, that she needed to get to the bottom of it all. And then it turned out that there was surveillance footage available, showing a man giving her the iPad."   After being confronted with the CCTV footage, the man admitted to the crime and has been sentenced to four months in prison, since "a motive for the crime has been to libel her (the beggar) because of her skin colour, national or ethnic origin" – a hate crime.