The crime statistics given in the following article are no surprise to anyone who has been following the general trends in the major cities of Western Europe. Norway is unusual, however, in that it is willing to collect and make public the ethnicity of perpetrators — France and Sweden, for example, don’t allow such forms of data collection.

What was dismaying in the article was the fact that a third of the population of Oslo is now made up of people with a “migration background”. Norway has put the brakes on immigration in the last few years, yet it seems that the capital city is rapidly approaching London, Brussels, and Paris in its level of cultural enrichment.

Many thanks to Tania Groth for translating this piece from Norway’s commercial TV channel TV 2:

Immigrants behind three out of four violent crimes TV 2 has gone through all the verdicts in which a person was convicted of serious bodily injury and gross bodily harm in Oslo, from the beginning of 2018 until today. A total of 140 people have been sentenced in the past year. Among the verdicts we find people who have carried out stabbings, beatings and abuse. We also find victims who have suffered lifelong injuries, deep cuts and cranial fractures. It has been revealed that in one third of the verdicts either a knife, glass or bottle was used. More than two out of three are immigrants There is a large majority of men among the convicted. The convictions furthermore show that immigrants are over-represented. TV 2’s investigation shows that of the 140 perpetrators, 70% were of immigrant background. In other words, more than two out of three violent incidents in Oslo were carried out by immigrants. This is despite the fact that, according to Statistics Norway, immigrants make up 33 per cent of Oslo’s population. An immigrant is classified as a person who has immigrated to Norway, or who was born in Norway, but who has a mother and father who were both born abroad. Not surprised Although the figure seems high, the violence researcher Ragnhild Bjørnebekk is not surprised. She believes that one of the reasons is that many come from cultures where violence is more prevalent. “They are more vulnerable; they have experienced more trauma. Some of them come from violent cultures, and they bring it with them. And then some of them are not Norwegian citizens, who come from other countries and only stay here for a few months,” says Bjørnebekk. The parliamentary representative and Oslo citizen Himanshu Gulati (FRP) points the finger at Oslo City Council, and believes that City Councilor Raymond Johansen and the City Council’s immigration policy are to blame for the high proportion of immigrants among the convicted. “He must understand that the policy he advances has real-life consequences. If you want to maintain high immigration to Oslo, then it will not become easier to handle the problems we are now seeing.”