Rise in harassment of Swedish Migration Agency staff members:report

The Swedish Migration Agency has seen a dramatic rise in harassment of its employees since last year.

While few of the threats have been acted out or led to violence, staff members have experienced phone harassment as well as received threatening emails and messages on social media.

In some cases, asylum seekers have threatened to take their own lives or have acted aggressively at the Migration Agency's premises and at its accommodations, Swedish Television reports on Saturday.

The Migration Agency tracks all incidents that occur at its premises and accommodations and there were over 2,000 recorded incidents between September 1, 2015 and August 31 2016. Out of those, nearly 300 were incidents in which asylum seekers threatened staff members.

While in 2013, there were 1.4 incidents per 100 employees, in the first eight months of 2016 that figure was 2.6.

Since the Migration Agency changed its system for reporting incidents on September 1 this year, any figures recorded after that cannot be compared with previous ones. Endit