durant.dk

Murder plot becomes a “potential act of terrorism”.

I was shocked and dismayed last night, to hear teenagers roaming the streets in my Copenhagen neighborhood, shouting racist slogans as they demonstratively marched down the middle of the street. While I have been aware of incidents where youth have expressed racial hatred in Denmark before, I had always understood this to be largely a symptom of an extremist right-wing fringe. However, now that I reflect on the problem, I see a larger and very worrying pattern developing.

Just before their Christmas holiday break, the Danish government passed, with parliamentary support from the extreme right-wing Danish People’s Party (DPP), legislation that is colloquially referred to as the “Tunisian law”. The law was passed as an overt reaction to a case where the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) accused three men of plotting to murder the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard is known as the cartoonist whose caricature provoked demonstrations and attacks on Danish embassies, as well as boycotts of Danish products, when it was published in a Danish newspaper.

The case itself has never been to court as PET has refused to present evidence that a plot in fact took place. One of the individuals accused of participating in the “plot”, a Danish citizen, has faced no restrictions on his freedoms. Another individual, a Tunisian man, left Denmark voluntarily. The last person, also a Tunisian, has stayed in Denmark and lived with his Danish wife in the same city as the cartoonist. He risks being tortured if he is returned to Tunisia. The law, which is believed by independent experts to be unconstitutional, is designed, according to members of the government, to restrict his movements and those of a few select other individuals that are considered persona non grata, but that can’t be returned to their country of origin because their personal safety can not be guaranteed upon return. This so called “tolerated residence” should not be viewed as incarceration, as the people in question are allowed to move around freely during the day, but they are required to return to the refugee camp near Copenhagen at night.

So what’s the big perspective you ask? The big perspective is the combination of terror laws that authorize what would formerly have been considered unreasonable searches and seizures, the passing of potentially unconstitutional laws, increased monitoring of groups and individuals, the use of agent provocateur, media campaigns against Muslims, politicians comparing Muslims to rats and to cancer cells, public accusations by the intelligence service against individuals for planning “acts of terrorism” without the accused being able to clear their names in a court trial, the influence that the extreme right DPP exerts on a government trying to hold onto power, etc. The big perspective doesn’t look pretty. How can we expect teenagers to respect people of other races and religions, when clearly many politicians and much of the media benefit from the marginalization of minorities that is taking place and support restrictions on our rights that would have been considered unacceptable a few years ago? The goal of equal rights, equal opportunity and equal protection under the law isn’t getting any closer.