In a speech at the opening of the new year in the Danish Parliament, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen took a firm stance against young men of a non-Western origin who create insecurity in the country.
Girls and women are increasingly harassed just because they are Danish, she stated in her speech to the country.
“You are not allowed to take our freedom,” Frederiksen said when addressing the growing insecurity in society caused by migrants.
“How we manage our lives is our responsibility,” she continued, adding that the Danes have to face the facts.
“Every fifth young man with a non-Western background born in 1997 had broken the law before turning 21. It’s not everyone. But there are too many young men who take the freedom of others, steal children’s futures, intimidate prison guards – and leave behind a long trail of insecurity,” said the Danish prime minister.
Frederiksen pointed out that this is not something new, and that is the problem.
“It has been going on for too many years. Girls who are called derogatory names because they are Danish. Or girls who are subjected to social control because they have become too Danish. A sausage cart in Brønshøj that is attacked with firecrackers because it sells pork,” she gave a couple of examples.
Harsher penalties for offenders
Frederiksen said that such behavior is not acceptable and that it must have consequences.
“In far too many places, insecurity has been allowed to take root. Should we accept that there are places in Denmark where quite ordinary people should be afraid to be? Where residents are insecure about coming home late from work? Or worried about sending their kids outside to play?” she said, adding that the police need to crack down “troubled areas” of Denmark.
Currently, the police can ban individuals from staying in certain places, but Frederiksen believes that this is not enough and that in the future, police will be able to ban people from certain areas at certain times.
“It can be a parking lot in a residential area or at a train station, where these boys and young men gather and create insecurity. By doing this, we would send a message, saying, ‘You cannot be here. No one should be afraid to walk the streets of Denmark. You are not allowed to take our freedom’,” said Frederiksen.
At first, anyone who violates the ban should be fined SEK 10,000 (€966). If it happens again, the person could go to prison for up to 30 days.
The police must also be able to seize expensive jackets, watches, and mobile phones from those who break the law and have debts to the public sector, for example, for a previous crime.
“This way, we would give the police more power. At the same time, we would send the troublemakers and their parents a message that cannot be misunderstood,” said the Danish prime minister.
Frederiksen also suggested that those convicted of violent crimes committed in bars, clubs and other forms of nightlife should also be banned from Danish nightlife for up to two years.
Frederiksen said that Denmark will maintain its own strict immigration policy, but said that Europe’s has failed.
“The government will continue the strict immigration policy, but we must do more than that. We have a European asylum system that has really collapsed,” she said. She proposed processing asylum requests in countries outside of Europe.
Harsher stance against non-Western migration in Denmark
Frederiksen’s strong words echo former Immigration Minister Inger Støjberg, who recently wrote in a column for Danish media outlet BT that non-Western immigration has incredibly harmed Denmark.
“One might as well be honest and put it bluntly: Non-Western, and thus primarily Muslim immigration, has harmed Denmark far more than it has benefited,” she wrote in BT.
“There is a strong over-representation of criminals from non-Western countries, as the crime statistics clearly indicate,” Støjberg writes. “Immigrants and descendants from non-western countries are overall overrepresented by 255 percent in relation to their actual share of the population in Denmark.”
Statistics from previous years also appear to support claims that non-Western people are driving crime in Denmark. For example, in 2012, the Danish national police reported that conviction rates per 1,000 residents in Denmark amounted to 12.9 for Danish citizens, 114.4 for Somali citizens and 54.3 for citizens coming from other countries.
Denmark is not the only Scandinavian country facing the consequences of mass migration. In Sweden, the country has decided to not accept refugees from the burned out Moria Camp in Greece due to the problems the country is facing in terms of rising crime and integration failures.
Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, known for his pro-refugee stance in the past, has since acknowledged there are real problems in Sweden.
“If migration levels are so strong that integration is no longer successful, we risk further problems,” said Löfven on the topic of accepting refugees.
