This is a blog. A contemplative online presence aimed at presenting, commenting, scrutinizing and/or discussing a wide range of topics in the sphere of media, politics, technology, social justice, art, civil dissent and other subjects in our increasingly globalized network society.

fake watchreplica watches

‘The Iraq Center’ – autonomous initiative to counter Danish government failure

Posted on | November 18, 2009 | No Comments

One of the major national newspapers in Denmark, Politiken, has – somewhat contrary their not particularly leftist ideology – launched an autonomous (and may I say impressive) initiative to try to save some of the remaining Iraqi interpretors that the Danish government has rejected for asylum and started deporting back to war-torn Iraq to an uncertain and dangerous future (see below for round-up of the story so far).

The initiative from Politiken, spearheaded by cheif editor Thøger Seidenfaden, is called Irakcentret (‘The Iraq Center’) and is a job agency that aims to hire as many of the refugees on full-time basis, as that by law will grant them a work visa and thereby a permit to stay. Danish migration laws state that if a person can present proof of full-time employment at a wage equal to that of the average Dane (approx. 33,000 Danish Kroners a month, equal to 4,400 Euros) then they are entitled to a working visa.
The Iraq Center will give the refugess work in areas that match their education, and furthermore make efforts to setup some of the Iraqies to give presentations at relevant venues in education, politics, media and activism in order to spread knowledge of ao. the horrible situation they and their families are in due to hostile and human-rights violating Danish immigration legislation.

Irakcentret is run entirely on donations, so the newspaper is collecting funds from sponsors, readers and supporters.
I just chipped in and encourage everyone else to do the same – options include bank transfer, creditcard payment and giro. Unfortunately, there is no English page at present – or options for foreigners to contribute. Hopefully that will come soon.
So far, approx. 500,000 Danish Kroners have been collected, but more is needed in order to help all of the remaining Iraqies.

Quick round-up of the background story
Several hundred iraqies used to work for the Danish military as interpreters back when Denmark was engaged alongside the American and British troops in Iraq, and once the Danish troops were pulled out, these iraqies workers fled to Denmark to apply for asylum – because without protection in their native country of Iraq, they would have little chance to protect themselves and their families from the militia because of their work to help the occupying forces.

Now, fast forward a couple of years, the Danish government – headed by Church- and Integration Minister Birthe Rønn-Hornbæk – have decided not to grant asylum to these people and their families and have started deporting them back to Iraq, by reference to an alleged agreement with the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. However, al-Maliki has publicly denounced the existence of such an agreement and will thereby not grant the deported any sort of protection.

Huge demonstrations and civil disobedience have taken place in Denmark because of this horrible decision by the Danish conservative/right-wing government, but so far no actions have been able to the governments trajectory – and save the Iraqies and their families from deportation.

Hopefully Irakcentret will be able to change that.

Comments

Leave a Reply





  • About this blog

    Welcome to the autofunk.dk/freeform101_web blog, a contemplative online presence aimed at presenting, commenting, scrutinizing and/or discussing a wide range of topics in the sphere of media, politics, technology, social justice, art, civil dissent and other inspiring and/or troublesome subjects in our increasingly globalized world and network society.

    The blog is edited by Christian Villum.

    The 'megasolutions to microproblems' tag is a word remix of a compilation series title coined by Soul Jazz Records
  • Archives

  • RSS Feed

  • Contact the editor

  • Support

    Freeform101 takes several hours a week to curate and edit. Any modest donation will be highly appreciated. Thank you.

  • Support


    Open Share Icons

    Bloggers' Rights at EFF

    Support CC