Denmark’s open-air prison is a badge of shame

▶ Treatment on migrant islands is a continuation of the torture many have fled

For years, Denmark has enjoyed a top five ranking in the World Happiness Report. That the experience of migrants and asylum seekers in the country stands in such stark contrast to its citizens is Copenhagen’s great shame. As The National reported from Lindholm, the centre-right ruling coalition, which relies on the far-right Danish People’s Party to pass legislation, has revealed plans to banish certain migrants to the remote island. It will be an open-air prison for its inhabitants, who cannot return home because they face torture or execution. Residents – those who have criminal records or have had their asylum applications rejected – will be allowed to leave during the day but must sleep there. As UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said: “Depriving them of their liberty, isolating them and stigmatising them will only increase their vulnerability.” Yet the harsh policy aims to do just that. By dehumanising migrants and rounding them up in isolated camps, it will render them invisible in a place where they will feel neither the compassion of ordinary citizens, nor act as a visible reminder of society’s responsibility. As Danish immigration minister Inger Stojberg wrote: “They are undesirable in Denmark and they must feel it.”

Denmark, like many countries in Europe, has hardened its immigration policies since an influx of 39,000 migrants and refugees from 2011. They have become the targets of a ruthless campaign by the DPP, which rejects Denmark’s “transformation to a multi-ethnic society”. Its fingerprints are visible in a series of policies, from the recent ban on the niqab to a 2016 law allowing immigration officials to seize possessions from asylum seekers to pay for their presence in the country. With the latest proposal to transform Lindholm into an offshore prison, there are parallels with Australia’s cruel detention of refugees on the Micronesian islands of Nauru and Manus for months at a time, a treatment described by Medecins sans Frontieres as being “worse than torture”. A similar mental health crisis erupted among the 6,000 inhabitants of Moria, Greece’s largest refugee camp, where children as young as 10 have tried to commit suicide. The journey undertaken by migrants and refugees is often treacherous and taken as a desperate last resort. The idea that they could be treated in such an inhumane way on arrival in Europe should be a source of immense shame, not the badge of honour it appears to be in Copenhagen.