Denmark has been severely criticised by the ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) for having a generally negative view of ethnic minorities, especially Muslims. According to the ECRI report, it is too difficult to get citizenship in Denmark, too difficult to have one’s family brought to Denmark if one has achieved citizenship, and too difficult to get married to a non Dane. The mood of the country is generally hostile towards immigrants, especially Muslims and the media and politicians are constantly putting immigrants, and especially Muslims in a bad light. Ethnic minorities do not have the same opportunities as other members of society the report concludes
The Danish government’s integration minister Rikke Hvilshøj has responded by rejecting the report as being undocumented and full of factual errors.
“There is an ocean of errors and it is a little difficult to take such a report seriously. For example, it says [in the report] that Danish judges have a bias against ethnic minorities, and yet there is no basis offered for this” Hvilshøj has called for concrete examples.
Government spokesperson Jens Rohde has also responded. “The report is completely unbelievable and without validity. It has deliberately withheld important information on the positive effects for immigrants of the governments policies. It is completely unacceptable”.
According to Ekstra Bladet, Denmarks Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said he will throw the report in the waste paper basket.
Professor of Law and Chairperson for the ECRI Eva Smith is of the opinion that Rikke Hvilshøj has misinterpreted the report. “The idea is not to criticise” she says, “The idea is to be a conduit for those people whom one normally cannot hear and to try to point out those things which perceive might be a problem in Denmark.” Eva Smith is 'surprised' that the Danish government is not interested in investigating whether or not there is any basis to the report.
In an interview with Jyllands Posten however, Eva Smith relates that the report is not based on actual studies of Danish judges behaviour, but rather on what the ECRI ‘has heard’. She explained “You can’t honestly say that there is not one single judge in [Denmark] who hasn’t made a discriminating statement”.
moif: If Denmark really is as bad as every one is making out then I must be blind, because I just can’t see it. I don’t understand how raising the standards as to who gets in and who doesn’t is ‘racist’. From my perspective its simply a question of who decides who can become a Dane? The EU seems to wish us to have no say in who can come and settle in Denmark and would leave the decision to the immigrants themselves. Looking at whats happening in Sweden, I see a nation that is rapidly becoming Muslim. Sweden, which is circa 9 million people, has the lowest fertility rates in Europe, except amongst its Muslim population. Currently Sweden is granting entry to 60,000 immigrants per year. It is also granting 21,000 families to come to Sweden to join those who have already been granted the right to live in Sweden. More people now apply to live in Sweden every month than do in a full year in Denmark.
I can't see how stopping this sort of influx can be considered 'racism'. Its simply a matter of self defence. Once the Muslim minority becomes a majority, it will simply use democratic means to take over the government and introduce Sharia law. According to some people, just my saying that qualifies me as being, if not racist, then certainly islamophobic, but the truth is, that the Swedish imams have already made their intentions clear and I'm not saying anything they haven't said themselves.
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In the meanwhile the (British) Islam Channel’s conference on ‘Islamophobia’ here in Denmark ended with a decleration. During the conference men and women were seated seperately as in accordance with Islam’s teaching and this brought about condemnation from Danish womens rights groups (criticism which has gone unanswered as usual).
Abu Laban, who spoke at the conference, didn’t seem to notice the irony of this self imposed apartheid when he actually compared himself to Nelson Mandela. Neither did the audience who nodded at his audacious self description just as they happily nodded when the US military prisons at Guantanamo Bay were compared to Auschwitz (and just what does that have to do with European Islamophobia?).
'Fear of and prejudices about Islam have always been there, but we need to have the courage to talk about things,' said Mohamed Ali, president of the Islam Channel.
Despite being billed as an international conference, and the largest of its kind since the row over the Mohammed cartoons exploded this winter, the majority of those participating were Muslim.
Organisers had invited a broad spectrum of Danish politicians, members of the press and other public figures, but only a handful of ethnic Danes were to be found amongst the 900 people in attendance.
'We had hoped to see more Danes take part in the debate. We invited the prime minister to open the conference and all Danish ministers to participate. We invited political parties, even the Danish People's Party, the mayor of Copenhagen - and the Queen,' Ali said.
Link.
moif: I’m not surprised so few wanted to join in. Why would ethnic Danes wish to participate in a conference that was clearly designed to push the blame for Islamophobia away from Islam and onto the Europeans? Those few Danes who did participate were all strong advocates of multiculture and familiar faces in the TV debate circuit and were largely 'nodding dogs' to what was basically a facade. The conference was billed as an attempt at dialogue, but there was no such thing and any one who accepted the invitation to speak at the conference would have been granting validity to the practice of gender discrimination.
In a DR TV interview I saw one British women in a headscarf telling the Danish journalist that “Denmark is years behind us in the UK”. I’d have liked to have asked her, why then have Muslim terrorists twice attacked London and yet no one has blown up the metro in Copenhagen? Why is it we tolerate Abu Laban's open defiance of our culture and values but your own country has thrown Abu Hamza into jail?
Sure we are not perfect, but neither are we ignorant as to the Islamic terrorism that rampant multiculture has brought to the UK.
2 comments:
I'd much rather have it your way Moif than how it is over here. Far too many wishy washy, do gooder, namby pamby liberals in the UK making this country the laughing stock of any immigrant or would be hijacker who cares to enter the Uk by fair means or foul.
Since I wrote that post I've learned that Eva Smith is, not only a Dane, but she is a politically active Dane who has an apparently anti government stance.
Thus Denmark has received its third official accusation of racism from the EU, but as before its always worth looking behind the anonymous face of the EU to see just who is making the accusations.
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