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Danes not afraid of organised terrorism
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June 11th, 2014
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Planned strikes on the general population no longer a concern
Only 17 percent of Danes fear the threat of organised terrorism in their day-to-day lives – a 50 percent fall from last year.
A similar survey in 2013 showed that one in three feared an attack. According to a MetroXpress/YouGov poll, the numbers are falling all the time.
Terror researcher Lars Hillerslev Andersen of the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIS) said that the media is partially responsible for people focusing less on organised terrorism.
"There is generally less attention paid to terrorism and less press,” Andersen told MetroXpress. “Whatever terrorism we hear about doesn’t really relate to Denmark.”
Additionally, individual acts of terrorism, like the Oslo shooting in 2011, have displaced organised terrorism as a bigger threat in the media's eyes.
Out of sight, out of mind
Andersen said that Danes are right to not walk around in constant fear.
“Al-Qaeda’s threat has lessened and there are no indications that the threat of terrorism is growing,” he said.
It has been almost nine years since the last major organised terrorist strike in Europe, the 7-7 bombings in London, and the memories fade, said another researcher.
“There are no recent attacks in our memories,” Karen Lund Petersen, a researcher from the University of Copenhagen, told MetroXpress. “Even the controversy surrounding the Mohammed cartoons happened many years ago.”
READ MORE: Signs point to reduced terrorism risk
National security agency PET maintains that the threat of organised terrorism in Denmark remains serious, but that the risk of becoming a victim is limited.
PET, which keeps a close watch on Islamist fighters returning from Syria, emphasises that people and sites linked to the Mohammed cartoons are still at risk.
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