Reem Abu-Hayyeh
Nearly 300 people face criminal charges for aiding refugees in Denmark in September 2015, and the government continues to create a hostile environment by cracking down on migration.
The rise in humanitarian and political initiatives in solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees that we have seen across Europe in the past year has been reflected in Denmark, in contrast with the government’s defensive response (Denmark, along with the governments of Belgium, Austria, Sweden, France and Germany, has demanded an extension of temporary controls at the internal borders of the Schengen area). In September last year, as images of thousands of refugees walking along the Rødby highway towards Sweden were splashed across national newspapers and television channels, some citizens, influenced by the political response, saw the images as indicative of a threat to Denmark, but many others, such as the ex-head of Denmark’s National Council for Children Lisbeth Zornig, went to aid the refugees. It is those who have now been charged with ‘human trafficking’ amongst other things, for assisting refugees with travel, crossing the border, or simply for providing them with food or clothing. The charges are under section 59(8) of the Danish Alien Act, which criminalises ‘assist[ing] an alien with travelling into or through the country or … with an unlawful stay in the country’.
Restricting access to support – and to citizenship
Denmark is often viewed as a model social democracy, but its treatment of refugees and asylum seekers has exposed the limits of these claims. In the country’s July 2015 national elections, the nativist Danish People’s Party (DPP) won over 21 per cent of the vote, making them the second largest party after the Social Democrats, momentarily looking as though they might form a right-wing coalition government. As it currently stands, Venstre (Denmark’s Liberal Party) leads a minority government, influenced by the DPP on a vote-by-vote basis. In October 2015, the new conservative-liberal government, with support from the Social Democrats, Liberal Alliance, Conservatives and the DPP, passed legislation severely restricting migrants’ access to public funds (with cuts to ‘integration benefit payments’) and services, as well as demanding a whole host of new requirements for citizenship, with retrospective effect, including higher language and income thresholds and the cancellation of the Social Democrats’ 2014 reform which gave easier access to citizenship for children born and raised in Denmark (children over the age of 12 now have to meet the same criteria as adults).
Continue reading “Institute of Race Relations: Denmark – creating a hostile environment”
