‘Ghetto Children’ Forced to Class
COPENHAGEN — When Rokhaia Naassan gives birth, she and her baby boy will enter a new category in the eyes of Danish law. Because she lives in a low-income immigrant neighborhood described by the government as a “ghetto,” Ms. Naassan will be what the Danish newspapers call a “ghetto parent” and he will be a “ghetto child.”
Starting at the age of 1, “ghetto children” must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for instruction in “Danish values,” including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language. Noncompliance could result in a stoppage of welfare payments.
Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low- income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.
In his annual New Year’s speech, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen warned that ghettos could “reach out their tentacles onto the streets” by spreading violence.
Politicians who once used the word “integration” now call frankly for “assimilation.” That approach is embodied in the “ghetto package.”
Of 22 proposals presented by the government in early March, most have been agreed upon by a parliamentary majority, and more will be subject to a vote in the fall.
Some are punitive: One measure under consideration would allow courts to double the punishment for certain crimes if they are committed in one of the 25 neighborhoods classified as ghettos, based on resi- dents’ income, employment status, education levels, number of criminal convictions and “non-Western background.” Another would impose a four-year prison sentence on immigrant parents who force their children to make extended visits to their country of origin, described here as “re- education trips.”
At this summer’s Folkemodet, an annual political gathering, the justice minister, Soren Pape Poulsen, shrugged off the rights-based objection. “Some will wail and say, ‘We’re not equal before the law in this country,’ and ‘Certain groups are punished harder,’ but that’s nonsense,” he said. To those claiming the measures single out Muslims, he said, “To me this is about, no matter who lives in these areas and who they believe in, they have to profess to the values required to have a good life in Denmark.”
On a recent day, Ms. Naassan was sitting with her four sisters in Mjolnerparken, a housing complex designated a ghetto. They wondered aloud why they were subject to these new measures. The children of Lebanese refugees, they speak Danish without an accent and converse with their children in Danish; their children, they complain, speak so little Arabic that they can barely communicate with their grandparents.
“Danish politics is just about Muslims now,” Sara, 32, said. “They want us to get more assimilated or get out. I don’t know when they will be satisfied with us.”
Barwaqo Jama Hussein, 18, a Somali refugee, said the politicians’ description of “parallel societies” simply did not fit her, or Tingbjerg, where she has lived since she was 13.
“It hurts that they don’t see us as equal people,” she said. “We actually live in Danish society. We follow the rules, we go to school. The only thing we don’t do is eat pork.”
About 20 kilometers south of the city, in the middle- class suburb of Greve, though, voters gushed with approval. “They spend too much Danish money,” said Dorthe Pedersen, a hairdresser. “We pay their rent, their clothing, their food, and then they come in broken Danish and say, ‘ We can’t work because we’ve got a pain.’ ”
The push to force Muslims to integrate struck Anette Jacobsen, 64, and her husband, Jesper, as positive. “The young people will see what it is to be Danish and they will not be like their parents,” Mr. Jacobsen said.
“The grandmothers will die sometime,” Ms. Jacobsen said. “They are the ones resisting change.”
By focusing on the cost of supporting immigrant families, the Danish People’s Party has won voters away from the center-left Social Democrats. With a general election approaching next year, the Social Democrat party has shifted to the right on immigration, saying tougher measures are necessary to protect the welfare state.
Ms. Hussein is accustomed to anti- immigrant talk surging ahead of elections, but says this year it is harsher than she can ever remember.
“If you create new kinds of laws that apply to only one part of society, then you can keep adding to them,” she said. “It will turn into the parallel society they’re so afraid of. They will create it themselves.”
New laws make immigrants learn ‘Danish values.’