[ad_1]
In early March, the Danish government, led by a center-right coalition, proposed to introduce a series of laws to regulate the lives of people living in 25 regions of the country inhabited mainly by Muslims. The goal is to impose their "badimilation" rather than integration into Danish society. The proposals are twenty-two, are part of the "ghetto package" and some have been heavily criticized.
One of these proposals has already been approved with the support of the opposition, led by the Social Democrats. Starting next year, children from the so-called "ghettos", aged one year, will be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week to receive a compulsory education for "Danish values": they will learn the constitutional principles of state, the Danish language and also the national culture, including Christmas and Easter traditions. Not participating in the program could affect the right of access to the national health system.
The stated goal of the "ghetto package" is to build a homogenous social fabric with common values. Nearly 87% of the 5.7 million inhabitants of Denmark are of Danish origin, immigrants and their descendants represent the rest. Two-thirds of immigrants, about half a million people, come from Muslim countries, a group that has grown in recent years with the arrival of Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees. The government therefore concentrates its policies on the urban neighborhoods where immigrants live (and who are often placed by the government) and which represent a departure from a small, very heterogeneous social model: the "ghetto neighborhoods" have been selected on the basis of resident income, the employment rate, educational levels and the number of criminal convictions above the national average.
In his annual speech at the end of the year, the current Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, He devoted much space to what he called "parallel societies" : Places where, he explains, "children grow up in an environment where it is not normal for parents to go to work. Where money is not a salary earned. I am talking about residential areas where young people are forced to marry someone they do not like and where women are considered less important than men. (…) Areas where people do not badume their responsibilities, do not participate, do not take advantage of the opportunities we have in Denmark, but are outside the community. "Prime Minister blamed" decades Lax immigration policy: "More people were brought to Denmark than we could integrate." He said that we can not change the past, but that we can learn from the past for the future he explained that a "strong" immigration policy is needed and that it is necessary to prevent "the ghettos from stretching their tentacles in the streets "
Many politicians who used the word" integration "in the past, wrote New York Times now use the word" badimilation ". However, some of the proposals contained in the package have a clear punitive purpose: one of the innovations in question would allow the courts to double the sentences for certain crimes in case they were committed in any of the 25 neighborhoods clbadified like "ghettos". Another measure would impose a four-year prison sentence on parents of immigrant children who force their children to make extended visits to their home country, which the government has described as "re-education trips" and which would be detrimental, according to the government, to the training they received, their language learning and their well-being. Another measure would still allow local authorities to increase the control and surveillance of "ghetto families": the far-right People's Party, DF, proposed not to leave the "ghetto children" 8 in the evening. One MP suggested that children in these regions could be equipped with anklets.
Yildiz Akdogan, a social democratic parliamentarian whose constituency includes Tingbjerg, a large residential complex six kilometers north of the center of as a "ghetto," he said that the Danes became so insensitive to the harsh rhetoric on immigrants that they no longer understand the negative connotation of the word "ghetto" and the fact that this word refers to Nazi Germany and the separation of the Jews from the rest of the world. population. He said that at this particular moment in history "the facts do not count much, but they only count the feelings". Those who oppose the new approach of the government argue that by creating a system of laws that only applies to one part of society, it effectively creates parallel societies that would be rather eliminated. Danish children are not obliged to go to school until the age of six: one thing is wanting to teach them the language, another requires them in some way so to badimilate to the religious traditions of a country. Even more serious would be to create a parallel penal system and special only for certain categories of people.
Danish Justice Minister Søren Pape Poulsen answered these questions at the 110,000-strong Folkemødet political festival: "Some people will complain and say, 'We are not equal before the law in this country.' or "some groups are punished harder", but that makes no sense. " He said the increase in penalties, for example, would only affect people who break the law. And to those who say that the measures affect Muslims, he replied: "It's nonsense: no matter who lives in these areas and what he believes in, he must profess the values necessary to have a good life in Denmark ".
New York Times interviewed some of the people living in so-called "ghettos": Rokhaia Nabadan is pregnant and her son when he will have a year will be included in the mandatory preschool program. She lives with her four sisters in Mjolnerparken, a four-storey red brick residential complex in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, and has been ranked among the worst ghettos in Denmark: 43% of the inhabitants are unemployed, 82% come from 53% have a low level of education and 51% have relatively low incomes.
Nabadan's sisters wondered why they should be involved in the new laws. The children of the Lebanese refugees, they explained, speak for example Danish without any accent and speak so little of the Arab who can hardly communicate with their grandparents. Sara, 32, said that a few years ago, it was very difficult to manage anti-Muslim sentiment in Denmark. But he added: "Maybe that's what has always been thought of, and now everything is open." And again: "Danish policy only concerns Muslims now, they want us to badimilate or leave, I do not know when they will be satisfied with us." Barwaqo Jama Hussein, an 18-year-old Somali refugee, said that many immigrant families, including his own, had been housed in the "ghetto" neighborhoods of the government. She moved to Denmark at the age of 5 and has lived in the Tingbjerg ghetto since the age of 13. She said that the description that politicians make of "parallel societies" did not correspond to the truth: "It hurts they do not see us as equal people. We really live in Danish society. We follow the rules, go to school. The only thing we do not do is eat pork. "
Social Democrats have moved to the right in recent years over immigration issues, saying that more stringent measures are needed to protect the welfare state." Rune Lykkeberg, editor-in-chief of Dagbladet Information a local newspaper left, explains to New York Times : "Critics say that the state can not force children to leave their parents during the day, and that it's a disproportionate use of force.But the Social Democrats say, "We give money to people and we want something in exchange for that money." It's a A system based on rights and duties The Anglo-Saxon conception is that man is free in nature, and the state manages to limit this freedom.Our conception of freedom is the opposite, "Man is free only in society." One could say, of course, that parents have the right to raise their children as they wish. We would like to say, however, that they do not have the right to destroy the future freedom of their children. "Of course, he adds," there is always a strong sense of authoritarian risk. "
[ad_2]
Source link
