Radical or rational? Danish website reporting on E. Europeans' ‘misdeeds’ causes uproar

18 Sep, 2014 17:56 / Updated 10 years ago

A right-wing Danish politician has launched a controversial website for locals to report the wrongdoings of eastern European immigrants, especially if residents think these are linked to criminal activity in the country.

The website called “Meld en Østeuropæer”, (Report Eastern Europeans) urges the Danish population to share their stories: if they were robbed or attacked by eastern Europeans; lost their job to “an underpaid eastern European” or simply had been "bothered in other ways" by eastern European immigrants.

The website caused criticism in Denmark and abroad, but its creator, Peter Kofod Poulsen, told RT that he doesn’t consider his idea “radical at all.”

“I have absolutely no problem with people coming to Denmark, to work and pay taxes. I don’t see a lot of eastern Europeans as problems - they are welcome,” Poulsen said.

According to the 23-year-old politician, the “huge problem” is the increasing number of criminal gangs from Eastern Europe, which operate in Denmark.

On his website, Poulsen cites police data, saying that more than a fourth of all burglaries in Denmark are committed by people from Eastern Europe.

The member of the right-wing Danish People's Party (DPP) believes that the best way to tackle the situation is to scrap open borders in order to prevent illegal immigrants from getting into the country.

“Actually, it is because of the distance between regular Danes and our parliamentarians in Copenhagen. [There is] a huge problem that we haven’t really got a real border control in this country that [leads to] a lot of consequences,” he explained.

The politician gave an assurance that all the data shared on the website would “be made anonymous” as there’s no way to guarantee if the stories that the people send are real.

With anti-immigrant moods on the rise in the European Union, the page seems to be getting quite a response from Danish citizens.

“This morning I had about 2,000 emails, but I haven’t finished going through all the email so I don’t really have a number,” Poulsen said.

Former European Parliament member and political analyst, Glyn Ford, told RT that he considers the idea of the Danish website outrageous.

“There’s no need for such a website. There may be a problem with immigration, but it’s not one that’s going to be solved by collecting – if you want –hate stories about your local eastern Europeans that have actually come into your country,”
Ford said.

“In the past, Adolf Hitler and Mussolini felt that they had a case for what they were doing. I see no reason, just because this man (Poulsen) said that he’s got a case, to accept that it’s a genuine and a valid one,”
he added.

More than one in four Danes voted for Poulsen’s DPP party in this year’s EU election, making it the largest Danish party in the European Parliament, with Ford confirming that there are currently “far too many,” who vote for “racists and fascists” in the EU.

The mainstream politicians in Europe must address the immigration issue, and solve it “in the way that demonstrates tolerance,” Ford said.

“Firstly, what we’ve got to do is help people deal with some of the problems as to why people are migrating,”
he explained.

The international community must address the situation in such sources of immigration as Syria, Iraq or Eritrea, so people there “don’t feel that they have to leave home to have any hope for the future. Most people would prefer to stay where they know, as long as they feel that they’ve got some hope,” Ford said.