From Western
Europe's most
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989
DENMARK better legal guarantees in the handling of their requests (including possibilities for appeal). And the principle of "first country of exile" was defined in such a way that asylum could only be denied if the applicants had already found refuge in another country, or if, because of long residence,
* open to its family or similar connections, they had closer ties to another country.
Under the impact of the growing numbers of refugees, in 1984 the demand was raised most closed country for making the law more restrictive. In June and December, the law was amended concerning the asylum procedure. But the decisive restrictions were introduced in October 1986, with the support of the bourgeois government and the social democracy.
Tightening up of visa
BESIDES FRANCE, in the last period in Europe the major success of a racist party in national elections has been in
Denmark. Traditionally one of the most liberal and generous of capitalist countries toward refugees and with one of the strongest traditions of support for human rights, it has taken giant steps backward in these areas.
The following article describes the reasons for this regression and the anti-racist movements that have developed to combat it.
ÅGE SKOVRIND
N THE SUMMER of 1985, a group of young Danes attacked a center for asy.
lum-seekers in Kalundborg, a smal provincial town. Stones were thrown through the windows, while the crowd shouted threats against the refugees. There was a celebration in the town, and a group of local people worked themselves up against the refugees, who were accused of
"stealing our girls" and "sponging on the
Danish people." Among other things, the people resented the fact that the refugees were riding around on new bicycles. "The town never gave me a new bike," those hostile to the refugees argued.
This event can be seen as a turning point in the debate on the refugee problem in
Denmark and in the government's policy toward refugees. It was the first physical attack on refugees and so aroused widespread comment. It was the event that led to the formation of groups of "friends of refugees." And it was the event that led to a sharp discussion in Denmark first and foremost about refugee policy, but which led on naturally to increasing attention to the situation of immigrants.
At the beginning of the 1980s, only 500 to a thousand refugees arrived in Denmark annually. This number included both UN refugees (selected from refugee camp populations and placed in different countries according to quotas), refugees and people who come on their own, and those coming
28 to join their families.
This number rose drastically after 1984. The following table shows the numbers of refugees referred to Danish Refugee Aid (this, after being granted asylum, which following 1984 often took over a year). The figures in parentheses are the numbers seeking asylum. (In 1987, the number accepted was higher than the number applying because the more restrictive law came into force in that year, while at the same time applicants admitted the previous year completed their waiting period.)
1,186 (4,312)
1981 810 1985 6,551 (8,698)
1982 799 1986 6,806 (9,299) 1983 689(332) 1987 3,924 (2,726)
1988 3,759 (4,600)
In the summer of 1983, the parliament adopted a a new aliens law, which was introduced by the workers' parties and the Radical Liberals but finally accepted with the support of the five bourgeois parties in the government. But it was not because of this new law that the number of those seeking exile rose sharply in the following
The reasons for this were primarily the development of the world situation (especially the Iraq-Iraq war and Lebanon) and the fact that the other West European countries began to tighten up.
The 1983 law established asylum as a human right. Applicants for asylum got far requirements
This tightening up was a big step backward, even by comparison with the pre1983 legislation. Henceforward, those seeking asylum had to have a visa to enter Denmark and to have their requests considered. The police and the Aliens Bureau now stop asylum seekers without visas at the border, and then return them to country in which they last resided, so long as the country in question, in the opinion of the state authorities, is "safe." In the meantime, a number of cases have indicated that refugees are in fact being sent back to countries where they are not free from risk (in some instances because the countries concerned have sent them back again).
At the same time, the airlines were made subject to fines if they brought people without valid travel papers (passports and visas) to Denmark. That made it next to impossible to come to Denmark, since the Danish embassies are very restrictive about granting visas, and many refugees do not have passports. One consequence is that Turkish citizens today are blocked from coming to Denmark as tourists, because the authorities fear they may apply for asylum. Another consequence is that extra police forces are assigned to pursuing refugees who try to cross the border between Denmark and West Germany illegally.
With this change in the law, Denmark has been transformed from the country with the least restrictive refugee laws in Europe to the one with the most restrictive rules. The legislation includes the provision that it is to be reviewed after a year. But the coalition parties decided simply to let it continue.
The following factors help explain the reactions to the growing number of refugees after 1984:
• The authorities were entirely unprepared for it. The necessary housing did not exist. That meant that the lodging offered to refugees and seekers of asylum was particularly poor. Often those seeking asylum were concentrated in smaller towns, where the population was neither prepared for, nor used to, associating with foreigners from
January 23, 1989 • #155 International Viewpoint alien cultures.
Moreover, there were not enough personnel to handle the applicants for asylum - guides, interpreters, teachers and so on. The result was a terribly long wait before the decision was made and in many ways a desperate situation for the refugees.
• The refugees arrived in a period of a widespread housing shortage, high taxes, cutbacks in social services and considerable unemployment. Among the groups that suffered from this situation, negative reactions to the refugees developed spontaneously — "Why should they have it when we don't."
• The percentage of foreign born in Denmark is very small in comparison to most other European countries, especially foreigners coming from third-world
There are 136,000 foreign nationals in Denmark, which corresponds to only 2.7% of the population. Of these, immigrants from countries outside Scandinavia, the EEC and North America amount to 55,000, about 1 percent. The latter include 39,700 immigrants of Turkish, Pakistani and Yugoslav citizenship. Of these many came to Denmark in the 1960s. In that period, Danish employers were interested in bringing labor power into the country. In 1970, when this demand had been met, immigration was halted. Minor children and wives of immigrants established in Denmark could, however, still get entry permits.
The 1960s immigration also gave rise to racist reactions. But it should be remembered that this was a period of boom. In the 1980s, we have been in period of economic crisis and attacks on living standards by the bourgeois government.
Growth of racist and anti-racist organizations
Since 1984, refugee and immigrant policy has been a central issue in public debate, and its consequences have prompted the growth of both racist and anti-racist organizations.
The attack in Kalundborg led to the setting up of a group of "Friends of Refugees," which defended refugees on a humanitarian basis. Corresponding groups were set up in a series of other cities, which led to a real national organization of these groups. Politically, they were marked by bourgeois-liberal attitudes. On the local level, typically their activity consisted of socials with asylum-seekers and refugees and providing legal and other sorts of help in individual cases.
Nationally, the Friends of the Refugees came to play a certain role in the public debate on refugee policy. They developed expertise and could provide documentation about laws and conditions in the countries the refugees came from and so on.
In this first phase, Youth Against Racism was also founded, with the encouragement of the Socialistisk Ungdoms Forbund, the youth organization in solidarity with the Danish section of the Fourth International. More than a hundred young people came to its first meeting in Copenhagen in August 1985. But the organization never became
While it organized a number of antiracist demonstrations, debates and actions among young people, Youth Against Racism never developed into a dynamic movement. Politically, it distinguished itself by combining the fight against racism with the fight for jobs, education and housing for both Danes and immigrants.
The Friends of the Refugees have not developed either, politically or organizationally. To the contrary, various local groups have fallen apart.
Most unions have not defended refugees
The organized workers' movement played only a limited role in these initiatives. In some cities, the trade-union movement, however has taken a clear position against racism and, for example, defended the refugees right to settle in their towns. An exemplary initiative was taken in Århus (Denmark's second largest city), where the local labor council sent out an anti-racist newspaper.
There is, however, hardly a single union that has officially taken a position against refugees or called for more restrictions in the law. The problem is that the big union confederation has done nothing actively to defend the refugees. The unskilled workers' unions have a certain number of immigrant members. But only the hotel and restaurant workers' union (the only national union in which the Left Socialist Party members hold the posts of chair nationally and locally) has an active immigrants' committee. Locally and nationally, many unions have come out in opposition to the bourgeois government's refugee policy and declared their opposition to racism.
Among the political parties, the rightwing populist Progress Party has distinguished itself by a policy extremely hostile to the refugees and immigrants. The other bourgeois parties put up a respectable, humanitarian front, officially taking their distance from racism, while at the same time in government they have made the laws more restrictive for the refugees.
The Progress Party is demanding an immediate halt to the influx of refugees and measures to repatriate those already in the country. In his first public statement after he was released from prison in 1985 (for tax evasion), the party's founder, Mogens Glistrup, agitated against the so-called "Islamic menace." He raised a similar cry on the eve of the most recent parliamentary
Agitation against immigrants has been the Progress Party's main calling card in recent years. There is hardly any doubt that it contributed to the party's advance in the
DENMARK last parliamentary 9.0% (see /V * same time, * Party is first and parliamentary party, with a very weak organization in comparison to the traditional bourgeois parties. Thus, it does not organize physical attacks on immigrants or other forms of "street racism," although its racist ideology and policy can very well inspire and legitimize such activities by other groups
As mentioned earlier, it was the five bourgeois parties that made up the government in 1986 and the social democrats who were were behind the tightening of the refugee laws. The social democrats' role has been especially reprehensible. The party generally stands for a policy aimed at integrating immigrants and refugees into Dan-
That in practice measures to promote social and cultural association between Danes and immigrants But we have also seen leading members of the party supporting economic discrimination, for example, against Turkish women who do not know Danish. Sections of the party's immigrant committee has also proposed to make learning Danish a requirement for bringing family members to Denmark, which means limiting a legally
The social democrats have not advanced a policy for fighting the housing shortage. unemployment and other conditions that can promote racism. Likewise, the party has not declared that a common struggle of Danes and immigrants is necessary for solving these problems.
The Radical Liberals have traditionally stood for a more generous position than the social democrats. But after the May 1988 election, in which the Radicals formed a government with the two biggest bourgeois parties, they caved in.
### National defence movement formed
On the left, both the People's Socialist Party (SF) and the Left Socialist Party (VS) opposed the restrictions in the legislation on refugees. For the SF, however, defence of the rights of refugees and immigrants has not played any central role, although the party did let an immigrant conclude its TV program in the last election campaign.
On the other hand, the VS has traditionally been very active in this area, and for example published a series of party materials in foreign languages. In January 1987, the :29 VS initiated the launching of a national
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989
DENMARK movement in defence of the rights of immigrants and refugees. About 100 * people took part in the founding meeting, half of them the spring of 1987, this organization, the Landskoordineringen, conducted a bus campaign to a series of Danish cities, where public meetings and
The relatively large participation in the Landskoordineringen at the start could not, however, be maintained. Among other things, the reason for this was most of the organizational responsibility fell on the VS, which has been badly weakened in the last couple of years (losing its representation in parliament, among other things).
In the Copenhagen region, three local committees have been set up against racism, which are trying to mobilize on a class-struggle basis. All three were set up in reaction to racist practices in the neighborhoods. These three groups have founded a Fælles-Initiativ [Common Initiative Group] in Copenhagen, which has also made contact with some groups in other parts of the country. In the beginning, the Landskoordineringen was also involved Recently, however, it has concentrated essentially on refugee policy and not broad anti-racist work, as the local groups do.
Challenge to discrimination in housing
Fælles-Initiativ is dominated politically by far left organizations, and has very little organizational strength. Despite this, however, it has managed to take initiatives for demonstrations that have attracted broad participation and been supported by a long series of trade-union organizations.
The local committee in Ishöj (a suburb of Copenhagen, where 12.5% of the population are foreign born) differs from the other groups. For one thing, the majority of the members are immigrants. It also has a broader political composition. And the membership is substantially bigger. When the committee was formally founded last year, about 300 people took part, predominantly immigrants. The committee has set up a series of work groups, which are dealing with immigrants' problems in many areas - housing discrimination, advice, family planning, education and so on.
The starting point for this committee was discrimination in housing, practiced by a social-democratic local government. The mayor's avowed purpose was to reduce the 60 • percentage of immigrants in the town to 5%. Against this background, the local government stopped admitting immigrants into council housing. In other towns also (mainly in the Copenhagen region), where there is a large percentage of immigrants, housing discrimination is practiced
This question has also been the subject of a public debate in the national press. The Ishöj mayor's racial practices have not been disavowed by the social-democratic leadership. The party has limited itself to demanding that local governments should accept refugees, and has proposed legislation to spread the refugees around.
Physical attacks against immigrants
In @sterbro (a borough of Copenhagen), the question of housing discrimination was very prominent in the fall of 1987, when it became known that the borough government failed to allocate housing to immigrants in a certain neighborhood. The national papers took the question up.
The background to the affair was that a local group of Green Jackets — more or less organized street gangs of youth — was intimidating immigrants out of the neighborhood by physical attacks. They vaingloriously declared that a certain street had become a "white city." A new housing project under construction was to have the same status, they trumpeted.
When Copenhagen's conservative city housing manager reacted to this situation by accepting it and preventing people from going into this area, anti-racist groups took the initiative for a demonstration against housing discrimination. The route of the demonstration was planned to go through the street in question.
This initiative aroused a considerable discussion among anti-racists, in which some, for example the VS, were against going through the street where the Green Jackets "ruled." The argument was also raised that the Green Jackets were only victims of the bourgeois austerity policy and we should direct our fire against the latter. Finally, arguments were raised about what the demonstration would mean for immigrants still living in the area.
The initiators, including members of the Socialist Workers' Party, Danish section of the Fourth International, decided that it was necessary to protest directly against those who practiced racism, that is, both the Green Jackets and the borough government, and that therefore the route had to go through the neighborhood concerned.
Because of the division, tion route was changed at the last minute in order to get the broadest possible participation. However, because of the confusion about where the demonstration was going, and fear of getting into a physical battle with the Green Jackets, only the far left mobilized. The slogans were "Fight racism!" "Down with white cities!" "Homes, work and education for all!" "Common struggle against the cuts!" "No apartheid, including in Osterbro!"
About a thousand people took part, around half of whom were immigrants and refugees. It was the biggest demonstration that has yet been held against a concrete expression of racism, and under the circumstances it was a definite success.
After this demonstration in September 1987, the activities of Fælles-Initiativ have been particularly directed against the Danish League. This association was founded in April 1987 with the declared aim of combating the official Danish refugee and immigrant policy from a nationalistic point of view. Originally, the idea was to form a political party. But, among other things, because a section of the participants in the meeting thought that a political party already existed to take up that task (the Progress Party), it was decided to form an association.
The leaders and members of this group are predominantly retired civil servants and housewives, along with some younger fundamentalist preachers in the Danish Protestant state church, who are the spokespersons for the association and get almost unlimited space in a large section of the daily press. Already in 1986, these preachers took the lead in a national campaign against the refugee law.
Workers prevent Danish
League meetings
This association's rallies have been systematically confronted with demonstrations by anti-racist groups. In most cases, the rallies have had to be dispersed. Big police forces have been called out to defend the racists' right to freedom of expression.
If the rallies are still often being broken up, that is the result of exemplary cooperation between the anti-racist movement and the union groups concerned. The workers in municipal housing where Danish League meetings have been planned are organized in a union that has decided to recommend that its members do no work for the League's meetings. In some cases, the personnel have been able to appeal to the rule in the Central Contact (the union contact between the national union confederation, LO, and the employers' organization), which permits a refusal to work if it endangers "life, honor or well-being."
The result has been that the meetings have generally been broken up, which has aroused a sharp debate in the press. But truculent right-wing papers and more liberal dailies (including the LO-financed daily!) have defended the racists' freedom of expression in a one-sided way.
For the anti-racist committees, the mobilizations against the League's activities have been a concrete action that has drawn attention to the anti-racist viewpoint, and they have functioned as a unifying element in the movement.
Around the country, from time to time actions have been taken to combat racism.
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FLYGTNINGENE
„HjEM"
Danish Premier Poul Schlüter: "With my help refugees can go home! "
But so far no one has managed to establish a real national anti-racist movement. An attempt to set up a Danish section of SOS Racisme was made in 1987, initiated from France. But despite support from one of the biggest newspapers (with social-liberal politics), this organization did not manage to take root in Denmark.
SOS-Racisme rejected united initiatives with other anti-racist organizations, for example in connection with a common European Day of Action on April 1988 (before the French presidential election), when a demonstration of a couple of thousand people was held in Copenhagen. The self-appointed leadership of SOS-Racisme in Denmark intervened in a bureaucratic way when the local committee became too "political." That led, for example, to a split in the committee in Copenhagen.
Another part of the anti-racist work that should be mentioned is the Underground Refugees, an organization that helps seekers of asylum who get entangled in the legal machinery. Typically, the committee pays lawyers who take up the cases of refugees whose applications have been rejected. In this way, the committee in many cases has kept refugees from being expelled from the country. Its work is financed mainly by contributions from the unions.
The Danish Nazis have proclaimed that they propose to run candidates in the municipal elections in three cities in November 1989. This will be the first time since
The Nazis' biggest activity in the last couple of years has been agitation against refugees and immigrants and for a "racially pure Denmark." "Racism is love of Denmark," a poster says that they have put up in a long list of cities. The Danish Nazis do not have many members, well under a 100.
But for a number of years the Danish party has printed and distributed Nazi literature for other countries. Its chair, Poul Heinrich Riis-Knudsens, is general secretary of the international Nazi organization. His book, National Socialism, a left-oriented movement, has been translated into a large number of languages.
The Nazi campaign for the municipal elections will be an unparalleled provocation, and can be expected to be met with various actions by a whole range of organizations. The first organized initiative for the moment is the creation of the People's Movement Against Nazism, in whose leadership sit social-democratic trade-union leaders and retired military officers. The People's Movement has received moral and economic support from a large part of the social-democratic trade-union movement. But so far it has not undertaken any activities. Local groups have been set up only in five cities.
A central issue in the political struggle
So far, the Nazis have limited their activity to meetings, fly-posting and so forth. It has reported, however, that meetings have been held between Green Jackets and Nazis. If it takes place, organized collusion between the Nazis and the racist street gangs would be a qualitative leap in a dangerous direction.
Increasingly, more or less organized gangs of young people are showing up in
They have undertaken various violent attacks on immigrants in recent years. In Tåstrup, a young Moroccan was murdered in May 1987. On other occasions, they have attacked immigrants'
DENMARK shops, which have been smashed up and painted with racist slogans. In an isolated case, young * immigrants organized a self-defence action after an attack. In this connection, it should also be mentioned that left oriented organizations have been exposed to threats and attacks from racist organizations. The VS, the VS youth organization and the Socialist Workers' Party have all been hit.
This growth of racism and anti-racism shows that the question of the rights of refugees and immigrants has become a central issue in the political struggle in Denmark in the last couple of years. Even if today there is not the same discussion of the refugee law that there was in 1985-87, the very restrictive practice toward seekers of asylum has continued to be a central theme for work.
Alongside this is the question of thousands of foreign-born people who have had residence permits since 1984, and after an 18 month naturalization program have been granted formal equality with Danes. As regards real opportunities for housing, education and in many other respects, they have had anything but equality. They will generally be consigned to the bottom of the social ladder, exposed to discrimination and harassment. Defence of these people will therefore be an inseparable part of socialist politics in the Denmark of the 1990s. *
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International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989
SWEDEN