Sweden prepares for more clashes as far-right demos continue

Police in Sweden says 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 permission 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 outweighs enormously heavily and it takes an incredible amount for this to be ignored,” Hild told Swedish news agency TT.