Unrest After Danish Immigration Raids

There has been violent unrest in Denmark today after police entered a church in Nørrebro in which a group of immigrants have illegally taken sanctuary to remove 19 rejected Iraqi asylum seekers. Some articles state that over 12,000 people have gathered to protest this move.

I actually thought the average Dane had far more sense than to basically call for more immigration and for the immigrants to be above the law as soon as they enter the country.

The marchers are probably in the minority, however - a recent poll suggested that 56% of Danes support removing the Iraqis from the church by force, and 67% support them being deported.

Here is the initial story about the raid:

Eye witness reports claim police used extreme force to subdue protesters

Police raid on church sheltering refused Iraqi asylum seekers, sparks violent street protests

Seventeen Iraqi men and numerous protesters have been arrested following a police raid on Brorson’s Church and in ensuing street clashes, TV2 News reports.

The church in the city’s Nørrebro district, where refused Iraqi asylum seekers have been sheltering, was raided at 1:30 am this morning. The action unleashed violent protests from about 300 people, many affiliated with refugee assistance group Kirkeasyl.

Protesters formed a human chain on Rantzausgade to stop the bus used to take the Iraqis away. But when that move failed, the protesters began attacking the bus, smashing the windscreen.

Police used pepper spray and truncheons to break up the protesters, many of whom were arrested. Numerous confrontations between the protesters and police followed, with order being restored in the area at about 5am.

Per Ramsdal, Brorson’s Church vicar, said the police wreaked havoc inside the church. He said the raid was anything but peaceful and calm as the police had promised.

‘A lot has been destroyed. It was a very violent approach from the police’s side.’

Flemming Steen Munch, spokesman for Copenhagen Police, said his force received a request from the National Police to carry out the action. He denied it was a raid.

Police entered the church with civilian officers and took the Iraqis away, but the officers were forced to go into uniform when the street riots began, according to Munch.

Integration minister Birthe Rønn Hornbech described the action as ‘unfortunate but necessary’.

Around 80 Iraqis had originally sought refuge from repatriation in Brorson’s Church. While some have been sent back to Iraq, up to 45 others are ‘missing’, according to police.

Now comes the inevitable criticism of everyone but the rioting Leftists and the asylum seekers who chose to break the law rather than turn themselves in. Of course, the bottom line here is that only a tiny number of illegal immigrants and rejected asylum seekers are ever actually removed from Europe.

Cold comfort to the ones actually caught, perhaps, but people cannot be seen to break the law with impunity.

If these individuals must be expelled, then they must be detained.

The reason for that is simple - if they are not detained, they will disappear, as happened recently:

Many Iraqi refugees waiting to be sent back to their home country have not reported to the authorities as required

Authorities do not know the whereabouts of 46 of 49 Iraqi men denied asylum and whom the Iraqi government has agreed to take back, reports Berlingske Tidende newspaper.

According to officials at the two asylum centres where the Iraqis are housed, the 46 men have not returned to their rooms for some time.

The refugees are required to report to asylum authorities twice a week, retrieve their mail every third day and collect a supplementary income check every two weeks. If they break this pattern, they are considered missing by the National Police, who then put out an arrest warrant for them.

That aside, the number of people seeking refuge in Denmark rose by 54% this year alone; the vast majority of these are young men from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Denmark now has severe problems with immigrant crime, including an ongoing gang war; it also has minority politicans from countries with appalling human rights records lecturing the government about equality, whilst calling for 'all minorities to come together to become the majority'.

What concerns its elite, however, are the fact that the police in Copenhagen dared to enforce the law today:

Some big names in politics are condemning the police raid on Brorson's Church

Several politicians, including a former prime minister, condemn police raid on Iraqi asylum seekers

Severe criticism is being directed at the Copenhagen police’s heavy-handed removal of 19 Iraqi asylum seekers from their shelter at Brorson’s Church in Nørrebro early this morning.

Former prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who is currently the president of the Party of European Socialists, has blasted the police action.

‘It went beyond the bounds of common humanity and decency,’ he said.

Politicians at home have condemned the police action as well, most of the criticism coming from three of the four government opposition parties. But the Social Democrats, the nation’s largest opposition party and Rasmussen’s former party, supported the evictions.

While the former prime minister refused to get into the political aspects of the action, he told Ritzaus Bureau he was worried what the United Nations and humanitarian groups would think when they get news of the operation.

Video taken of the eviction included an officer beating a young woman numerous times with his truncheon and several other incidents of police using what could be interpreted as excessive or unnecessary force.

Many of the Iraqi men’s wives and children fled from the church during the action and their whereabouts are unknown.

Birthe Rønn Hornbech, the integration minister, told Berlingske Tidende newspaper that the police action was not initiated by the government.

‘The police have their own division to deal with immigration issues,’ Hornbech said.

She added that the Iraqis themselves were to blame for the situation.

'When Denmark made the agreement with Iraq to take the refugees, I appealed repeatedly to them through the media to go home willingly. I made it clear that if they had to be sent back forcefully then they wouldn’t have any influence on their own situation.’

An Iraqi delegation is reportedly on the way to Denmark to determine the identity of the men arrested at the church.

“I am deeply shocked at the cynicism that seems to have grabbed Danish society,” Nyrup Rasmussen says in connection with the arrest of 19 rejected asylum-seekers from the Brorson Church in Copenhagen.

“The police raid a church containing mostly innocent people on the same day that the Iraqi prime minister has seriously questioned whether Iraq will accept these refugees. I am deeply shocked when I think of the United Nations reaction at our way of treating these people. We have crossed the line of what is humane and decent,” Rasmussen says.

Rasmussen declined to comment on whether Danish authorities have been very patient with the rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers, who have been ensconced in the Brorson’s Church in Copenhagen since May.

“We have previously shown that we are a humanitarian society. We can remember the Bosnian refugees (Ed: in the 1990s) Nyrup Rasmussen says.

Nyrup Rasmussen also declined to comment on whether the rejected Iraqis should be given asylum under a special law, as happened with Palestinians in 1992.

“I’m not going to discuss law. I can only say that there must be another way. Is this how we want our country to be,” asks Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

This is what passes for government in Europe today - bleating about the rights of people who range from uninvited guests to criminal parasites.

What about the rights of Danish people who actually want their laws enforced, who don't want their country to become the world's welfare office?



Tomorrow, I plan to look at just what the kind of upstanding chaps you can see above are bringing to Denmark, and why the 12,000 marchers must be so eager to see them remain.