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RACISM

Danish politician target of racist abuse outside parliament

Member of the Danish parliament Sikandar Siddique and his parents were the target of racist verbal abuse during the assembly’s annual reopening day on Tuesday.

Danish MP Sikandar Siddique in parliament earlier this year. Siddique and his parents endured a racist verbal attack near Christiansborg on October 5th.
Danish MP Sikandar Siddique in parliament earlier this year. Siddique and his parents endured a racist verbal attack near Christiansborg on October 5th. Photo: Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later condemned the incident in a social media post.

Siddique and his parents were accosted by a man wearing a t-shirt bearing the words “Fuck Islam” as left the parliament at Christiansborg.

The man told Siddique, along with his mother and 82-year-old father to “go home”. The incident was recorded on a video published by tabloid newspaper BT.

“Aren’t you planning to go home soon? You can take your parents with you, or whatever it is. Your Arabic culture has no place in Denmark, you’re not welcome here,” the man shouts in the video.

Siddique was born in Copenhagen and does not have Arabic heritage. His parents are originally from Pakistan.

Frederiksen subsequently strongly condemned the incident in a Facebook post.

“(Siddique) was yesterday subjected to an unheard-of racist attack right outside Christiansborg. That’s bad enough in itself. But what’s worse is that elderly parents were also subjected to an entirely unfair and boorish confrontation,” the PM wrote.

“I’m so upset about it that I will this evening ask parliament to reject the episode in unity. A racist attack on a family is an attack on all minorities. It has no place in Denmark,” she continued.

“And an attack on a democratically elected politician is an attack on democracy itself. Neither does this have any place in Denmark. My thoughts today go especially to Sikandar’s parents,” she added.

Siddique, a former member of the Alternative party who now sits as an independent, but is political spokesperson with the recently formed Independent Green Party, expressed his thanks after several political colleagues from both sides of the ideological divide pronounced their support.

“A thousand thanks for all the warm messages after what happened yesterday. It means very much, both for my parents and for me. We are fine under the circumstances and the police are now on the case,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

READ ALSO: Danish parliamentarians split off to form ‘green, anti-racist party’

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RACISM

Denmark to criminalise hate speech against trans people

The Danish government wants to add new terms to the country’s hate speech laws to protect trans people from discrimination.

Denmark to criminalise hate speech against trans people
Photo: Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix

The Social Democratic minority government plans to add the terms gender identity (kønsidentitet), gender expression (kønsudtryk) and sex characteristics (kønskarakteristika) to section 266b of the criminal law code – commonly known as the ‘Racism Paragraph’.

Newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, which was first to report the proposed law change, writes that it would be made with the intention of preventing hate speech against trans people.

The law change would mean that hate speech against trans and intersexual people would be treated as a crime on the same basis as all homophobic and racist speech.

The proposal is supported by left wing parties the Red Green Alliance and Socialist People’s Party, with the Social Liberal party also in support in principle. As such, it has a theoretical parliamentary majority in support.

Denmark’s racism paragraph was originally enacted in 1939 in an effort to prevent antisemitism.

Given the cultural value placed on free speech in Denmark, it has traditionally been interpreted in a way that still allows pointed statements to be made in public debate without these being judged as racist, according to an expert on the law.

READ ALSO: Why Denmark's free speech tradition is not a free pass for Quran burning

“The paragraph works well,” University of Southern Denmark law professor Sten Schaumburg-Müller told Kristeligt Dagblad.

“You have to reach a certain level of offensiveness before statements break the law, and this is out of consideration for free speech,” he explained.

“For example, you would have to say that a particular group are cancerous tumours or rodents that must be exterminated in order for it to be criminal,” the professor elaborated.

Minister for equality Mogens Jensen declined to comment to the newspaper on plans to update the law, but the Social Democratic spokesperson, Lars Aslan Rasmussen, confirmed its intention to prevent hate speech and incitement to criminal activity.

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