- The far-right Danish People's party has caused a row
by taking out a full-page advert in a national newspaper naming every immigrant
given citizenship this year, to highlight what it regards as an alarming
influx of foreigners.
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- The advert, in the best-selling Sunday newspaper Jyllands-Posten,
named all the 4,743 immigrants who have received Danish passports so far
this year, and the towns where they have settled.
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- The political parties which voted in favour of giving
them citizenship were also "named and shamed". The episode has
provoked a fierce debate about freedom of speech in Denmark. Every mainstream
political party has condemned the advert as tasteless.
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- A Centre Democrat MP, Arne Melchior, said it violated
Danish privacy law, but it has since emerged been made clear that political
parties are exempt from the law.
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- It has also provoked outrage overseas. The Swedish newspaper
Sydsvenska Dagbladet has urged Danes not to vote for the DPP.
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- It said Danes were more hostile to asylum seekers than
Swedes, even though Denmark accepts far fewer refugees.
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- The DPP is supported by about 12% of Denmark's 5.3m
population and is widely expected to prop up the minority Liberal-Conservative
government in the forthcoming general election.
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- The party, which has 13 MPs in the Folketing (parliament),
advocates the repatriation of refugees to their countries of origin.
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- It says that only small numbers should be accepted provisionally,
but it insists that it is not racist. "We're colour blind in our
party," its strategist, Soren Espersen, said.
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- "The purpose of this ad was to make people understand
the amount of people who get citizenship. "When you look at this page
it looks overwhelming. More than 40,000 people have been granted citizenship
in the last three years, which is a lot for a country of this size.
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- "We've never had these amounts of people before,
we've never had ghettos in Copenhagen and we've never had so many people
living here who can't speak Danish. We find that very disturbing.
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- "Sixty or seventy per cent of the people on this
list originally arrived as refugees, but once they get Danish citizenship
they'll be able to vote and join the army and the police, and we find
that very disturbing, too."
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- He said the citizenship requirements were too lax and
took no account of criminal activity or Danish language skills. Lars Kjolbye,
international secretary of the Conservative People's party, condemned the
advert.
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- He said: "A majority of the names on the list were
from Pakistan and Muslim. It was distasteful and primitive. They [the
DPP] do it to get a certain amount of attention and you could say they
succeeded." Asked if his party would give the DPP any power if and
when it was forced to rely on it for support after the general election,
he said it would not be allowed to have any influence on "crucial
matters." The DPP claims much of the credit for the "no"
vote in Denmark's referendum on whether to join the euro.
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