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Foreign homeless threaten to take Denmark to European Court of Human Rights
Christian Wenande
August 3rd, 2017
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This article is more than 7 years old.
Recent crackdown is unjust, argues Roma community in Copenhagen
Begging can be an expensive endeavour these days in Copenhagen (photo: Pixabay)
Denmark’s crackdown on the foreign homeless has prompted the foreign homeless, primarily Romas, to entertain drastic measures as their frustration mounts.
A number of the foreign homeless who TV2 News interviewed said they were trying to gather evidence of Denmark’s tough stance on the foreign homeless in a bid to complain about the situation to the European Court of Human Rights.
“If they continue to terrorise us, we will complain about the situation to the European Court of Human Rights,” one foreign homeless person in Copenhagen, named Gabi, told TV2 News.
“All gypsys will send in complaints.”
READ MORE: Denmark gets tough on beggars
Tougher laws ahead
Since the government decided to take a harder stance on the foreign homeless issue, more people have been fined by the police for begging and expelled from Denmark.
The police has moved out a total of 45 times to clear up homeless camps, while about 200 people have been charged for being in the camps. Most were fined, while about 25 have been expelled because they’ve been stopped by the police several times.
“We aren’t doing well,” Armand Balutescu, a Roma from Romania, told TV2 News.
“We can no longer sleep on benches and in parks. We aren’t here because we are doing well. If we were doing fine in Romania, we wouldn’t come up here.”
The justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen, recently announced that he intended to further toughen the law so that a zone ban could be expanded to include an entire municipality.
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