Police in Sweden say they are preparing for new violent clashes following riots that erupted between demonstrators and counter-protesters in the central city of Orebro on Friday ahead of an anti-Islam far-right group’s plan to burn a Quran there.
Kim Hild, spokeswoman for police in southern Sweden said that the police would not revoke per-mission for a planned demonstration by the Danish right-wing Stram Kurs party in the southern town of Landskrona on Saturday because the threshold for doing that is very high in Sweden, which values free speech.
The right of the protesters “to demonstrate and speak out weighs enormously heavily and it takes an incredible amount for this to be ignored,” Hild told Swedish news agency TT.
Police said, however, that the rally would be moved to another undisclosed location, according to TT. Stram Kurs’ leader Rasmus Paludan was also planning a Quran burning in Landskrona, the agency said.
Hild said police were preparing for the demon-stration and possible violence with extra resources “given what has happened in recent days” in the Nordic country.—AP
