Swedes Gather in Memory of Anna Lindh

A young girl lays a card at the Katarina Kyrka cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden. It’s adorned with a picture of heaven she drew and the words: “You were our guiding light, we are following in your footsteps.”

As people in New York and Washington gathered to remember their loved ones lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Swedish citizens on Saturday collectively remembered the tragedy that struck them on the same day two years later: the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, one of the country’s most beloved politicians and a name often tipped as a successor to Prime Minister Göran Persson.

In an interview with Sweden’s TV4, Persson recalled last year’s tragic events, saying he still couldn’t believe it happened. With the death of the popular politician, he said, he had lost his “love of politics and his job.”

At Lindh’s grave and at the site of her fatal attack, countless Stockholm residents laid flowers and cards in remembrance of the foreign minister. Earlier this week, on Thursday, the city also christened a glass sculpture in memory of Lindh. The three-meter high sculpture, set at the last square where Lindh gave a public speech, is cut so that it cascades a rainbow of colors on sunny days.

Stabbed whilst shopping

On Sept. 10, 2003, the mentally disturbed Mijailo Mijailovic, a 25 year-old Swede of Serbian origin, stabbed Lindh at the posh NK department store as she was shopping. She died one day later from serious internal injuries. The attack on the Social Democratic politician set the country into a deep state of shock. Though it was normal for Swedish politicians to travel without body guards, Lindh’s murder wasn’t the first of a top-level politician in the country. In 1986, a still unidentified assailant killed Prime Minister Olof Palme.

But with a strong political future ahead of her, Lindh’s killing was especially disturbing. In an editorial published this weekend, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet wrote that the attack was “the day we will never forget.” He killer “took her last hope of a safe and danger-free society” with him, it continued. “It was as if the world stood still,” and “Sweden and the world were joined in collective sorrow.”

In March, a court convicted Mijailovic and sentenced him to a life prison term, but an appeals court later threw out the sentence and ordered that he be sent to a secure psychiatric facility for treatment.

Germany's Fischer plans speech

On Saturday afternoon, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and the European Union’s High Commissioner for External Relations, Javier Solana, were both planning to give speeches to anti-violence demonstrations and television shows in the Swedish capital scheduled on the first anniversary of Lindh’s death.