Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has claimed that there is no link between the high number of migrants the country has taken in recent years and the rising problem of gang violence.

The Swedish prime minister made his comments on Sunday on Swedish television, stating that the problem with rising gang violence was very real and different from the past and that the government “may not have seen it coming”, Nyheter Idag reports.

When asked by the host of the Agenda programme Anders Holmberg about links between mass migration and gang violence, Löfven was dismissive of any connection, blaming poverty and unemployment rates instead.

“The segregation is because there is too low employment and too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result,” the Swedish leader said.

Malmö Shooting Suspects Overwhelmingly from Migrant Backgrounds https://t.co/pN0x73IFAY — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 24, 2019

Löfven went even further, claiming that without the migration crisis of 2015, the country would still be facing the same problem: “Because of the economic gaps, the social injustices would have been the same.”

Several prior reports conflict with Löfven’s statements, including a report from September by newspaper Expressen that claimed the majority of suspects in shooting cases in the multicultural city of Malmö were from migrant backgrounds.

Another study, conducted by public broadcaster SVT, revealed last year that the majority of sex attackers were also from migrant backgrounds. As many as eight in ten assault rapes — in which the victim did not know their attacker — were committed by migrants.

Sweden: Around 90 Per Cent of 2015 Migrants with Residency Status Are Unemployed https://t.co/G4IhlnXBCx — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 6, 2019

Unemployment figures are also vastly higher for migrant-background individuals in Sweden than they are for native-born Swedes. A report released last year said that the unemployment rate for migrant-background individuals was as high as 19.9 per cent, compared to just 3.6 for natives.

Last month, Statistics Sweden’s integration database for health insurance and labour market studies (LISA) said that up to 90 per cent of asylum seekers who came to the country during the 2015 migrant crisis and had permanent residency were unemployed.

As Bombings Spread, Denmark Closes Border With Sweden https://t.co/cld4e2muQV — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 11, 2019