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Danish high court upholds ex-MP’s racism conviction

The Local Denmark
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Danish high court upholds ex-MP’s racism conviction
Mogens Camre. Photo: Betina Garcia/Scanpix

The Eastern High Court on Monday convicted Mogens Camre of racism for comparing Muslims to Hitler.

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The Eastern High Court found Mogens Camre, a 79-year-old former MP and MEP for the Danish People’s Party and current member of the Gladsaxe city council, guilty of racism on Tuesday and slapped him with an 8,000 kroner fine. 
 
 
Camre called the high court's ruling "completely unfair" and "grotesque". 
 
"This is an expression of the limitations of Danish mental freedom and a genuflection to the immigrant culture," Camre told broadcaster DR.
 
The two convictions stem from a tweet Camre wrote in in July 2014 that compared Muslims to Adolf Hitler. 
 
"Regarding the Jews' situation in Europe: The Muslims are continuing where Hitler left off. Only the same treatment Hitler received will change the situation,” he wrote in the now-deleted tweet. 
 
Two separate individuals filed racism charges against Camre after his tweet garnered national attention. 
 
Camre disputed the lower court’s August ruling, arguing that his controversial tweet was due to the popular social media platform’s 140-character limit. 
 
“I can only say that to express myself in a precise way would have taken more than 140 keystrokes. That is the problem,” he said in court, according to broadcaster DR. 
 
The Eastern High Court did not buy that argument and told Camre on Monday to pay the fine. 
 
Camre attempted to clarify his controversial June 2014 tweet with a subsequent post which said that “forces in the Islamic world who threaten non-Muslims should be fought like Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden and Gadaffi were”. 
 
Danish People’s Party leadership said that Camre’s racism conviction would not affect his standing in the party. 
 
Camre previously compared Muslims to Nazis in a 2009 Dutch TV interview. 
 
“The German soldiers in our streets behaved better than the Muslim boys – much better, they were well disciplined,” he said in a clip that can be viewed here
 
In 2003, Camre was charged with racism for saying that all Western countries have been infiltrated by Muslims planning to take over, and in 2005 he was reported to police for blaming Denmark’s low birth rate on the “immigrant burden” and for saying that “immigrants in Denmark as a whole do not contribute anything at all to society.”
 

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