Human Rights Slogans Have been used to mask Deep Racism in the West: The Case of Denmark

 Denmark is one of the Scandinavian countries that many dream of traveling to, either for tourism or immigration, because of its bewitching beauty and “good face”, but behind this beauty and goodness is a despicable ugliness and dark darkness that has covered these countries due to its unjustified behavior towards immigrants and non-Westerners and its fear of Muslims.

In Denmark, that open country, you find political parties - such as the Danish People's Party (DPP) - who raise the slogan "There is only one civilization; There are also those who fear the identity threat that comes with immigrants, and many suffer from the "Islamophobia" represented by Muslims.

Government and a history of racism

In 2001 a conservative liberal coalition came to power in Denmark, marking the first time that the right had obtained a political majority in 100 years. But this change would not have been possible without the support of the anti-immigration nationalist Danish People's Party, taking advantage of the context of the 9/11 attacks that fueled anti-Muslim hatred and shaped the political discourse of the Danish People's Party that led to the elections and their aftermath, further fueling anti-immigration sentiment. shrouded in fears of Islamophobia.

This generally anti-immigration and Islamophobia-fueled alliance held in power until its defeat in the 2011 elections. Although the Danish People's Party was not part of the cabinet, it cooperated closely with the ruling coalition on most issues and received support for key political positions in return. So much so that the government was generally referred to as "VKO-Government" with the letter O representing the Danish People's Party. This hard-line party also gave its support to the leader of the Liberal Party, Lars Rasmussen, who headed the government from 2016 to 2019 and again without participating in it.

In the 2019 general elections, the SPD, led by Mette Frederiksen, won an additional seat, while support for the Danish People's Party and the Liberal Alliance collapsed, costing Rasmussen her majority, and Frederiksen was appointed to head a minority government led by her party with the support of a number of other parties.

But this Frederiksen was no better off than her predecessors as her election slogans were anti-immigration, although she changed her stance on immigration briefly after her victory by allowing more foreign workers, and also rolled back the previous government's plans to detain foreign criminals abroad.

Hostility to "Syrian" immigrants and the policy of "zero asylum"

This apparent change in the Danish government's attitudes did not last long. In 2019, the Danish immigration services decided a strange decision that sparked a lot of controversy. It states that "the violence in Damascus has stopped and the Syrians can be sent back to their country."

Unlike the United Nations and the European Union, Denmark saw Syria as safe for refugees to return from, but because men can be drafted into the army, and older women often have children enrolled in Danish schools, the new policy has affected both the younger and older segments of refugees.

A Guardian report revealed that in 2019, the Danish government notified about 1,200 refugees from the city of Damascus not to renew their residency permits, considering the area safe, which prompted Amnesty International to announce that Syrian citizens whose residency permits have been revoked may face torture and disappearance. Forced and arbitrary detention upon their return to Syria.

Lisa Blinkenberg, Amnesty International Denmark, said Denmark's policy towards asylum seekers and refugees has become significantly more hostile in recent years, especially with Prime Minister Frederiksen's 2019 declaration that Denmark wants "zero asylum".

However, Denmark's "zero asylum" policy appears to apply only to Syrian refugees or any "non-Western" refugee.

Last March, the Danish Immigration Service asked 98 municipalities to assess their ability to receive Ukrainian refugees, and the same department had begun withdrawing residence permits from Syrian refugees, in an attempt to force them to return to Syria, which it considered that some places there had become safe, which caused In the separation of many Syrian families after years of residence in Denmark.

In the past few years, Denmark has been at the forefront of European countries in enacting “malicious” policies that prevent individuals from seeking asylum, and announced that its policy does not allow asylum at all, and on top of these policies is the so-called “jewelry law” that allows the government to confiscate the property of asylum seekers , including their jewelry, to finance their stay, and the Danish government made it clear that Ukrainian refugees would be exempted from this law.

This year, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance called on Denmark to urgently address discrimination against Muslims, racism against minorities, and stop forced evictions of migrant families.

The Commission has raised concerns about Denmark's many shortcomings, including hate speech by Danish political parties that largely stereotype Muslims, including legal foreign workers and immigrants, as a "threat to Danish values ​​and culture".

Exporting Asylum and Separating Families

This discriminatory policy against "non-Western" immigrants did not stop there. Rather, it went beyond the state's attempts to deport immigrants to other countries to get rid of their burdens.

In June 2021 Parliament passed a law enabling Denmark to transfer procedures for people seeking asylum and residence permits for refugees to non-European countries for examination of their cases, as part of Copenhagen's latest tough legislation against immigration.

Amnesty International revealed that between 2020 and 2021, the Danish government had contacts with the authorities in Egypt, Morocco, Rwanda and Tunisia. It also entered into negotiations with Kosovo regarding the use of prison cells for 300 people convicted of crimes and awaiting expulsion from Denmark; As part of their sentence.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned against exporting the asylum process, and Gillian Triggs, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, noted that such practices threaten the rights of those seeking safety and protection, discredit and punish them, and can put their lives at risk.

Denmark has also sought to complicate refugee family reunification, with the European Court of Human Rights finding last July that Denmark had violated its international human rights obligations by imposing a law extending the time a newly arrived refugee must wait before applying for family reunification. For 3 years, she said that this would affect about 4,000 Syrian refugees, considering that this violates the right to family life.

The Danish ghetto..a unique case of racism

These discriminatory policies in Denmark have been moved to a higher stage through what is known locally as the "ghetto list", a list announced by the government in December of each year that includes areas specific to certain groups of residents who it considers to live in isolation from their surroundings. The Danish ghetto list included 29 regions in 2019.

In a report by Amnesty International on Denmark last year, the organization accused Denmark of pursuing an unprecedented discriminatory policy aimed at reducing the number of residents of "non-Western backgrounds", particularly in ghettos.

The Danish government assumes that removing the non-white population from these communities will solve its problems, which was stated by the Danish Minister of Home Affairs and Housing in 2021 when he revealed plans to reduce the number of people of “non-Western backgrounds” in “ghetto” areas to less than 30% by 2030.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance denounced the government’s “ghetto” for separating immigrants into “Westerners” and “non-Westerners,” and said, “The package of policies approved by the Danish government to deal with ghetto gatherings is a pure recipe for discrimination, incitement and unnecessary punitive measures towards the ghetto areas in Denmark, which are Poor and fragile population areas, the majority of which are of non-Western races, face marginalization and exclusion from the government and decision-makers.

The Commission's report concluded that "the List has fueled xenophobia, racial prejudice and intolerance against vulnerable minorities through its flawed and discriminatory criteria targeting individuals of non-European races."

She further noted that the Danish Government's punitive policies are extreme and counterproductive, while their designation of minority areas as ghettos perpetuates stigmatization and exclusion in Danish society. According to the report, this designation violates the European Convention on Human Rights and European Union law regarding the rights to non-discrimination, equality and adequate housing, as well as the right to equality before the law and equal treatment before the courts.

UNHCR had previously asserted that "a society cannot defend human rights unless it defends the rights of every human being, including refugees, migrants, stateless persons, minorities and others", and Denmark is now far from being described as a defender of human rights.

In 2015 Representatives of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland, in addition to Denmark, clarified their position rejecting the European Parliament's plan to distribute one hundred and sixty thousand refugees to the member states of the Union.

  The International Organization for Migration announced that more than 430,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean since the beginning of this year, most of them have arrived in Greece, most of them are Syrians, followed by Afghans.