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Miami Herald
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
How One Country's Left Halted the Far Right with Tough Immigration Stance
As fears of mass immigration have lifted the fortunes of right-wing populists around the Western world, one place that's not happening is Denmark. There, it is Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's Social Democrat party that has implemented one of the strictest immigration systems in Europe in one of its most socially liberal countries. In so doing, Denmark has become an example for other nations seeking to strengthen immigration laws-not least the United States, where the perceived softness of the Democratic Party in this area was a key factor in the return of President Donald Trump last year. It also contrasts with much of Western Europe. "What I'm trying to convince most of my European colleagues about is that it has to be a democratic decision who will enter Europe," Frederiksen tells Newsweek in an interview in Copenhagen, a tolerant and cosmopolitan city where a religious group gifts Korans to shoppers barely 100 yards from the seat of power at Christiansborg Palace. Denmark gave asylum to 864 people in 2024-the lowest in 40 years with the exception of COVID-affected 2020-and the stated goal is zero. It is because of being a Social Democrat that she supports tougher immigration laws rather than in spite of it, Frederiksen says. Her argument is that the poor suffer most from overwhelmed schools, gang violence and insecurity resulting from those migrants who do not work or integrate with Danish society. The clearest testament to the success of Danish policies is the perception of would-be migrants themselves. Agob Yacoub is a Syrian of Christian origin who has been in Denmark for nearly 12 years after defecting from the army at the age of 23. He has worked as a social worker and a teacher and has learned Danish. But unlike family members who made it to nearby Sweden and became citizens four years ago, Yacoub's status is still temporary-and precarious. A few years ago, he had a map of Syria tattooed on one arm. He has no plans to get Denmark on the other. "The rules are somehow, like, designed to always make you fail," Yacoub tells Newsweek at his apartment in a diverse Copenhagen suburb where he lives alongside Sudanese, Iraqis, Palestinians and Albanians among others. "They are very good at sending a very bad picture of the system in Denmark that you will not get asylum," he says. "People will rather go to Sweden or Germany or elsewhere." Now he is considering whether to return to Syria after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad late last year-and Denmark would give him up to around $30,000 if he were to go back permanently. Eva Singer, head of asylum at the Danish Refugee Council, tells Newsweek there had been a surge of requests from Syrians looking at possible returns. There is a fundamental problem with the message delivered to asylum seekers in Denmark, she says. On the one hand they were told to learn Danish-not the easiest of languages-to work hard and integrate. On the other, they were told their residence permit must be renewed every year or two with no guarantee it will be. "These two different messages, they clash, and it makes it very difficult for the individual refugee to say, how much should I really put into trying to learn the language and get into the labor market?" she says, acknowledging the broad support the immigration policies have. One victim may have been Denmark's far-right. Morten Messerschmidt, leader of the right-wing Danish People's Party, accepts that its poor opinion poll showing compared with anti-immigration parties in Germany, France or Britain partly results from the Social Democrats adopting policies they once branded xenophobic. "That's not a bad thing," the tall, blond, neatly coutured Messerschmidt says. "It's essentially a very good thing in a political or a parliamentarian system that the best argument wins." For Messerschmidt, the argument has now shifted to the clash of cultures between Islam and traditionally Christian Denmark and to the question of whether people who are already in Denmark either integrate fully with Danish culture or leave. In focus right now is the deportation of immigrants who have committed crimes but who cannot be expelled because of judicial rulings based on European human rights law. It is a challenge for Frederiksen that has echoes of Trump's judicially stymied efforts to deport criminals who entered the United States illegally. Alongside her Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, Frederiksen penned a letter calling on the European Court of Human Rights to make it easier to deport foreign criminals-drawing a backlash from the court's parent body, the Council of Europe, which said: "Debate is healthy, but politicizing the Court is not." Asked whether Denmark could withdraw from the court, Frederiksen says: "That's not what we want to do." She argues that it is a question of democratic control over immigration and that the situation has changed since legal texts on asylum and refugee rights were adopted. "It was all about protecting minorities after the Second World War, especially the Jewish population. And I don't think they had the imagination that the result could be that a person from Afghanistan would enter Denmark and then commit very serious crimes," she says. "Europe is not able to welcome everybody, and maybe most important now, we have to be sure that we can get rid of people again if they don't behave well. It's not a human right to enter Denmark and do a rape and stay. The court has, of course, the right to be a court, but not to be an activist." Related Articles Trump's Greenland Bid Poses Global Dangers, Says the Woman Facing Him DownKamala Harris Says LA Protest 'Overwhelmingly Peaceful' Calls Trump 'Cruel'LAPD Says It Wasn't Informed About Marine Deployment, Poses 'Significant Challenge'Mette Frederiksen: Denmark's PM on Trump, Russia and Greenland's Future 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Koran-burner Hamit Coskun has exposed the cowardice of Starmer
Accusing Keir Starmer of being unprincipled is a bit like accusing Boris Johnson of infidelity. It's true, and bad and everything, but more or less baked in at this point. From immigration to transgenderism, Starmer has shown a remarkable shamelessness, always willing to trade in his alleged values as soon as it becomes politically expedient. Even so, revelations that Starmer once defended someone who desecrated an American flag – even though he and his ilk remain silent over the persecution of those who desecrate Korans – sticks in the craw. So many alleged human-rights champions are remarkably selective about whose rights they are and aren't willing to defend. Today, at Westminster magistrates' court, Turkish asylum seeker Hamit Coskun will go on trial for burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London in February. His protest against the Islamist turn of Turkey earned him a charge of disorderly behaviour likely to cause 'harassment, alarm or distress', supposedly motivated by his 'hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam'. Worse still, Coskun was attacked at the scene. First by a man with a knife, then by a delivery rider who ran over his hand. Coskun claims he was later menaced at his home in Derby, waking up to find two Iraqi men, armed with knives, in his kitchen, threatening to kill him if he burned a Koran again. He's now in a safe house for his own protection. If the Prime Minister might not be able to comment on this particular case, which has not yet run its full legal course, then at least he should have commented more vigorously and sooner about the spate of Islamic blasphemy controversies that have preceded it – from the Batley Grammar scandal to the Wakefield Koran-scuffing, in which an autistic schoolboy was bombarded with death threats and slapped with a 'non-crime hate incident' for dropping the holy book on the floor. Starmer only expressed concern three years after the case; he was Leader of the Opposition throughout that time. Starmer's silence on these matters is particularly deafening now it has been revealed that, in his days as a human-rights barrister, he successfully defended a peace activist who defaced the American flag outside a US airbase in Norfolk. His client, as Starmer put it back in 2001, had every right to 'peaceful protest in a free and democratic society'. He might have been defending a client under cab rank rules, in which a barrister is obliged to defend a client he might not agree with, but the principles of a peaceful and democratic society in which someone should be allowed to burn anything they own is nevertheless one we should all support. Whether or not he personally supported flag-burning, he was right to defend the right to do it. On matters relating to free speech, he should forcefully defend the right to blaspheme Islam. What changed? What makes flag desecration permissible but Koran burning an unacceptable, perhaps even bigoted, provocation? If you take freedom of speech and the right to protest seriously then you can surely make no moral distinction between arresting someone for standing on a flag and arresting someone for burning a book, so long as it is their property and no one was endangered. The problem is, from Starmer down we are led by supposedly liberal elites whose liberal principles abandon them when it comes to Islam, or indeed any number of topics they have decided are 'uncomfortable'. With an obnoxious mixture of cowardice and paternalism, they have decided that this one faith, unlike any other, must be ring-fenced from offence. So, in the name of defending Muslims, they treat Muslims differently to everyone else. They claim to care about human rights, then look the other way when an asylum seeker is arrested for protesting against the very ideology that he says led him to flee his country. Keir Starmer is the embodiment of a not-so-liberal establishment that has truly lost its way. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Daily Tribune
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Daily Tribune
Germany jails two Afghans in suspected Sweden attack plot
Two Afghan men linked to the Islamic State group were jailed in Germany on Thursday for planning an attack on the Swedish parliament in retaliation for Koran burnings by protestors. The two suspects, identified as Ibrahim M. G. and Ramin N., had allegedly tried but failed to buy guns for the plot. They were found guilty of plotting to "kill members of parliament... in response to the burning of Korans in Sweden", the higher regional court in Thuringia said in a statement. Ibrahim M. G., 30, was sentenced to five years and six months in jail, and Ramin N., 24, received a sentence of four years and two months. The defendants, who arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016 respectively, were Islamic State sympathisers who "shared the IS worldview and endorsed (its) violent approach", the court said. In August 2023, Ibrahim M. G. became a member of the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), an offshoot of IS, the court said. The two men hatched a plot to "kill members of parliament and anyone who tried to stop the attack with firearms in the area of the Swedish parliament", the court said. They had searched the internet for locations in Stockholm, how to travel to Sweden and how to acquire firearms. They had also travelled to the Czech Republic to purchase firearms on the black market but the plan had fallen through. They were arrested in the Gera area of eastern Germany in March 2024. Both men were found guilty of plotting to commit a crime. Ibrahim M.G. was also convicted of being a member of a terrorist organisation, and Ramin N. of supporting a terrorist organisation. IS-K was "an especially dangerous terrorist organisation whose attacks and atrocities were known to and endorsed by the defendants", the court said. Prior to the plot, Ibrahim M. G. was also found to have arranged for 200 euros ($210) to be transferred to an Iranian bank account for the support of women and children of IS fighters at the Al-Hol camp in Syria. Ibrahim M. G. made a full confession during the trial. Islamist extremists have committed several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people. Islamist motives are also suspected in several recent stabbings and car ramming attacks blamed on migrants in Germany, which have led to a bitter debate on migration. In October 2023, German prosecutors charged two Syrian brothers for planning an attack inspired by IS at a church in Sweden over Koran burnings. A series of Koran burnings were held across Sweden in 2023, mainly by immigration opponents, sparking outrage in the Muslim world.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Koran burner shot dead in Sweden
A man who repeatedly burnt the Koran in 2023 in Sweden, sparking outrage in Muslim countries, has been shot dead, media reported Thursday as police confirmed a man died in a shooting the day before. A Stockholm court was due to rule on Thursday whether Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protests, was guilty of inciting ethnic hatred. It postponed the ruling until February 3, saying that "because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed." Police said in a statement they had been alerted to a shooting in the city of Sodertalje, where Momika lived. The shooting occurred indoors and when police arrived they found a man who had been "hit by shots and the man was taken to hospital", the statement said. In a later update, police said the man had died and a murder investigation had been opened. Several media outlets identified the deceased as Momika, and reported that the shooting may have been broadcast live on social media. In August, Momika, along with co-protester Salwan Najem, was charged with "agitation against an ethnic group" on four occasions in the summer of 2023. According to the charge sheet, the duo desecrated the Koran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims -- on one occasion outside a Stockholm mosque. Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair's protests. Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion. In August of that year, Sweden's intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Koran burnings had made the country a "prioritised target". The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while noting the country's constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws. In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Koran burning, the first time the country's court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam's holy book. Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of a Koran can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion, and thus be protected under free speech. However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered "agitation against an ethnic group." jll/po/ach
South China Morning Post
30-01-2025
- South China Morning Post
Man who burned Koran in 2023 Sweden protest shot dead
Published: 5:10pm, 30 Jan 2025 A man who repeatedly burnt the Koran in 2023 in Sweden , sparking outrage in Muslim countries, has been shot dead, media reported Thursday as police confirmed a man died in a shooting the day before. A Stockholm court was due to rule on Thursday whether Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protests, was guilty of inciting ethnic hatred. It postponed the ruling until February 3, saying that 'because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed'. Police said in a statement they had been alerted to a shooting in the city of Sodertalje, where Momika lived. The shooting occurred indoors and when police arrived they found a man who had been 'hit by shots and the man was taken to hospital', the statement said. Police arrive at a residential block in Soedertaelje, south of the Swedish capital Stockholm, where Salwan Momika lived. Photo: AFP In a later update, police said the man had died and a murder investigation had been opened.
