When Majdaleen Abu Naboot got here to Denmark in September 2015, she was instructed she can be “secure” within the Scandinavian nation.
New set of alternatives, a safe future and a few mates. Naboot was hopeful and ultimately succeeded in beginning a brand new life in Denmark over the previous six years, forsaking a tumultuous previous marred by horrors of civil struggle in Syria.
However now a cloud of concern and uncertainty looms over her head once more as her newly constructed life may finish any time within the wake of the latest “laborious choices” — as she calls them — taken by the Danish authorities.
Initially from Daraa, Naboot tells me that the majority of her household again house is in jail preventing the regime. “We all know Syria higher than anybody. We can be killed by the dictatorial regime if we return,” she bemoans, visibly fearful, at a protest demonstration in Aarhus.
“Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome right here!” chants reverberated as tons of confirmed up in solidarity within the coronary heart of Denmark’s second-largest metropolis.
Anti-immigrant discourse is on the rise in Danish authorities circles, and Syrian refugees are bearing the brunt. Their lives had been by no means straightforward and now with the Danish authorities’s resolution to revoke residency permits of over 200 Syrian asylum seekers and shift asylum duty to 3rd international locations, their prospects of coming to Denmark or dwelling in peace listed here are bleaker than ever. They concern being despatched again to the war-torn nation.
Many have staged a sit-in within the capital Copenhagen since Might that’s prone to proceed for the remainder of June, refusing to return. “Syria isn’t secure” they insist. Some shared their tales of battle with me.
Naem Khori [name changed on the source’s request to protect privacy] for practically six years now has been dwelling in Denmark as an asylum-seeker, making an attempt to profit from the out there working alternatives. Khori, 26, got here to Denmark in 2016 looking for a greater life. “The most important downside I confronted once I first got here right here was settling at a spot I used to be despatched to,” he recollects.
Khori shares that he was despatched to Farsø, a city in Denmark, “in the course of nowhere” to be taught Danish the place individuals had been “not so welcoming” and the one residents he may work together with had been different asylum-seekers; a step that in his view defeats the potential of integration with the remainder of society — an issue he feels already existed in Denmark and wasn’t handled – resulting in the present extra radical steps by the federal government.
Khori feels pessimistic in regards to the anti-immigrant discourse within the nation’s corridors of energy which are solely seeming to realize momentum.
“I believe it’s all getting worse. When you check out the noteworthy political events in Denmark, the largest argument they’ve is normally the immigration coverage and that all the time retains immigrants within the shadow of concern over what could occur subsequent,” he tells me, pointing to an surroundings of uncertainty.
Rihab Kassem, a 66-year-old refugee grandmother, goes by even worse.
Her residency allow has been revoked because the Danish authorities now considers Damascus and the encircling areas secure to return. Kassem tells my colleagues that she has nothing in Syria, her household is in Denmark and she or he is the one one requested to depart. Kassem’s lungs function at 35 % of their capability – and since her standing has modified, she is not entitled to healthcare in Denmark, exasperating her woes.
Extra ‘externalisation’
The Danish authorities backs its externalisation plans of processing asylum requests exterior and claims they’re needed for the “security” of migrants which it states will forestall them from travelling in dinghies and risking lives within the Mediterranean.
The Danish authorities signed a memorandum of understanding with Rwanda — a 3rd nation — to set the framework for future negotiations and cooperation.
So far as revocation of permits is worried, no justification has been made and no justification appears justifiable to the rational thoughts.
In January, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen instructed parliament mentioned that the federal government’s objective is to have “zero asylum-seekers coming to Denmark.
“We should make it possible for not too many individuals come to our nation. In any other case, our unity can’t exist. It has already been challenged,” she mentioned; a press release her critics say was geared toward pleasing populist public sentiment.
This corresponds with the reducing variety of asylum-seeking requests in Denmark that registered only one,547 purposes in 2020, a decline of 43 % from 2019 and lowest annual quantity since 1998, in accordance with official figures.
Rights activists criticise the latest steps and level in the direction of a deeper downside regarding discrimination, Islamophobia and the concern of “non-western” values in Denmark which have been resurrected as soon as once more.
“The primary concern for our legislators is Muslims. That is about Islam,” Anemone Sami, a Danish activist, tells me, calling the federal government’s insurance policies as “racist” and urging solidarity with Syrian refugees whose religion and “non-western” background have difficult issues for them.
One factor turns into clear, Denmark is on the crossroads between the ‘tolerant values’ it takes delight in and the very intolerant legal guidelines its politicians are backing by dehumanisation of Syrian refugees.
If a developed nation like Denmark with an extended custom of respect for human rights turns its again on refugees, it is not going to set a great precedent for the host international locations within the humanitarian work that they’re doing or are able to.