9. Policing and Security
9.8 Danish-Somalis and the Focus on International
implemented within the last five years. In 2009 the government adopted a National Action Plan, “A shared and safe future”. The plan targeted young people and aimed at preventing extremism and promoting democracy. It included projects in vulnerable housing areas, programmes in prisons, training police officers, teachers and social workers, disseminating information to high-school students, establishing a new Danish youth council and establishing mentor programmes. These have been implemented in cooperation between ministries, police, the PET and municipalities, and civil society actors have participated in various projects.329
The national strategy and the plans adopted by each city all emphasise that extremism is not only found in Islamist environments but also as left-wing and right-wing extremism, especially after the Breivik case in 2011.330 The most intense prevention efforts focus on radicalisation related to al-Qaeda.
The Ministry of Children, Gender Equality, Integration and Social Affairs has established a democracy office, responsible for example, for the “prevention of extremism, anti-democratic tendencies, hate crimes, international cooperation on prevention of radicalisation, prevention of parallel perceptions of justice and outreach towards religious communities”.331 This office has financially supported some of the NGO initiatives in Copenhagen, including the bridge-builders (see Chapter 8).
The City of Copenhagen has participated in the National Action Plan through facilitating the incorporation of the PET into the existing local SSP network. The City has included training and implementing methods of awareness and strategies for actions on violent radicalisation and has also established a central project (VINK) in the city’s Employment and Integration Administration on the prevention of extremism and violent radicalisation.
328 Interview with IS, social worker, Somali NGO, 10 May 2013.
329 MHT, ”Afradikalisering”.
330 In July 2011, Anders Breivik set off a car bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, Norway, then went on a shooting rampage at the summer retreat of the Labour Party, motivated in part by his opposition to immigration and Muslims in particular. See
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/24/breivik-verdict-sane-21-years (accessed 8 September 2014).
331 See www.sm.dk (accessed 8 September 2014).
The VINK secretariat has organised meetings for city officials working with young people on topics such as “How it is be young, angry and criminal” or “Al-Shaabab and the recruitment of young people to go to Somalia”. It has also organised a group of 10 young resource people of different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds who can be consulted, and has developed web-tools, a telephone hotline for questions and discussions of concerns.
While the general tendency in city policy and administration not is to focus on a specific ethnicity or nationality, anti-radicalisation policy appears to be one of the few areas where explicit references are made to t Danish-Somali or Somali identification. In 2010, the VINK secretariat and the Employment and Integration Administration produced a memorandum of preparedness (Beredskabsnotat) on the Somali community.
The memorandum has circulated in the administration as a kind of handbook of knowledge on Somalis, furthermore, Danish-Somalis appear to be the only ethnic group to be featured in this way.332 It does not see the Danish-Somali community as a source of potential terrorists and warns against stigmatising the community through linking the group to terror, but it does note that Somali organisations in Copenhagen are competing, conflicting and wanting to promote themselves, and notes this as something that should be taken into consideration.333
One of the Danish-Somalis interviewed for the Open Society Foundations’ research was very critical of the way in which the memorandum singles out the Somali community:
I definitely haven’t experienced this kind of discrimination before. Even just the title, “Preparatory Note on the Somali Community” gives me a bad taste in the mouth. It is difficult to set up successful integration projects when those who are assigned the resources to do so won’t even meet the Somalis as equals but instead ask consultants to conduct research about Somalis.334
According to the administration, Danish-Somalis have not been not singled out as a specific group:
Our efforts are directed at all forms of extremism and not at targeting specific groups within the municipality of Copenhagen. With the Somali youth, we are attentive, as we are with all of the Copenhagen youth, if they show signs of being maladjusted or present that they’re marginalised, if they’re discriminated against or in other ways not functioning well, or maybe are involved in criminal activity or in our case, extremism and radical statements and actually overlap
332 Copenhagen Municipality, Employment and Integration Administration, ”Beredskabsnotat om det somaliske miljø” (Preparatory Note on the Somali Community). 2 March 2010, (hereafter, Employment and Integration Administration, ”Beredskabsnotat om det somaliske miljø”).
333 Employment and Integration Administration, ”Beredskabsnotat om det somaliske miljø”, p. 2.
334 Interview with IN, head of Somali NGO, 24 April 2013.
with the troubled areas which we have identified in the municipality of Copenhagen. And so these are young communities or groups, not that we have a special mission targeting Somalis as a demographic, but naturally we are especially attentive to the fact that Somalis, among many other minority groups, are exposed to more through marginalisation, also socio-economically, social housing is extremely marginalised.335
One of the social workers interviewed called for a more concentrated effort in the municipality on religious radicalisation, including working with people who have knowledge of Islam and experiences of religious and traditional practices, and the linguistic skills in order to engage in dialogue with the young people on what they share among each other or learn on the internet, for example.336
Among focus group participants’ and stakeholders’ discussions anti-radicalisation was brought up in various ways. In the focus group on policing and security, the group reflected on why the police paid them such close attention and referred to 9/11 as the moment when every Somali man became a potential terrorist for the police:
10 years ago the police was not like that. I don’t know when they became like this … maybe 9/11 or something … for example today, if the police want to some to your house , normally they go to court and get a letter but today it’s not
… they just come to your door and break everything and when they don’t find anything they just say “Sorry—it was a mistake.” It has to be changing that thing.337
A tendency among young Danish-Somali men in focus groups in this study is that they had experienced ethnic profiling in contacts with the police, which they often explained with stereotypes linked to terrorism, crime, or radicalisation:
I feel that the police is constantly after me … Even though they don’t stop me I feel they give me the look walking in the street—I don’t know if I look dangerous—I don’t know why … It becomes this whole paranoia. Maybe it is because I have been living in England … in England they changed the laws after July 7 bombings so the police can stop anyone at any time and I have been stopped a lot and when I came over here I’ve been stopped again a couple of times and I thought the whole world is the same …and there might be all these movies and media where the black guy is always the bad guy … I feel personally that the police are more after the black and the foreign people than they are after white Danish guys.338
335 Interview with DA, official Employment Administration, VINK, 27 May 2013.
336 Interview with IR, Social Administration, head of after-school institution, 28 May 2013.
337 P2, Policing and security focus group, 6 August 2013.
338 P1, Policing and security focus group, 6 August 2013.
The participants in the focus group on policing and security did not know that they could make a complaint against the police for their ethnic discrimination.