COPENHAGEN: The European Court of Justice is to rule Thursday whether a Danish law requiring authorities to redevelop poor urban \u201cghettos\u201d with high concentrations of \u201cnon-Western immigrants and their descendants\u201d is discriminatory.<\/p>\n
The law means that all social housing estates where more than half of residents are \u201cnon-Western\u201d \u2014 previously defined as \u201cghettos\u201d by the government \u2014 must rebuild, renovate and change the social mix by renting at least 60 percent of the homes at market rates by 2030.<\/p>\n
Danish authorities, which have for decades advocated a hard line on immigration, say the law is aimed at eradicating segregation and \u201cparallel societies\u201d in poor neighborhoods that often struggle with crime.<\/p>\n
In the Mjolnerparken housing estate in central Copenhagen, long associated with petty crime and delinquency, residents are confident they\u2019ll win the case they\u2019ve brought before the European court.<\/p>\n
They argue that using their ethnicity to decide where they can live is discriminatory and illegal.<\/p>\n
\u201c100 percent we will win,\u201d insisted Julia, a resident who did not want to tell AFP her last name.<\/p>\n
She said the law was solely about \u201cdiscrimination and racism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Muhammad Aslam, head of the social housing complex\u2019s tenants\u2019 association, was more measured, saying he was \u201cfull of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Long legal battle –<\/p>\n
Mjolnerparken residents filed their lawsuit in 2020.<\/p>\n
A preliminary opinion by the European Court of Justice\u2019s advocate general in February called the policy \u201cdirect discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the court\u2019s final ruling were to be along those lines, \u201cwe will be … completely satisfied,\u201d Aslam said.<\/p>\n
The 58-year-old owner of a transport company who hails originally from Pakistan, he has lived in the estate since it was created in 1987.<\/p>\n
He and his wife raised four children in their four-room apartment, children who are now a lawyer, an engineer, a psychologist and a social worker, he said proudly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI who am self-employed as well as my children are all included in the negative statistics used to label our neighborhood a \u2018ghetto\u2019, a parallel society,\u201d he fumed, referring to official data on the number of non-Western residents.<\/p>\n
In Mjolnerparken, the landlord took advantage of a renovation of the four apartment blocks, decided by residents in 2015, to speed up the transformation of the complex and comply with the new legislation.<\/p>\n
All of the residents \u2014 a total of 1,493 in 2020 \u2014 had to be temporarily relocated so the apartments could be refurbished, a representative of the tenants\u2019 association, Majken Felle, told AFP.<\/p>\n
At the time, eight out of 10 people in Mjolnerparken were deemed \u201cnon-Western,\u201d with people from non-EU countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe also falling into that category.<\/p>\n
– \u2018Disadvantaged ethnic group\u2019 –<\/p>\n
In order to avoid moving from one temporary apartment to another during the lengthy renovations, many residents agreed to just move to another neighborhood.<\/p>\n
And those who are determined to return \u2014 like Felle, the Aslams and Julia \u2014 are at the landlord\u2019s mercy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were supposed to be temporarily relocated for four months, and now it\u2019s been more than three years. Each year, they give us four or five different dates\u201d for when the work will be completed, Aslam sighed.<\/p>\n
In total, 295 of Mjolnerparken\u2019s 560 homes have been replaced, with two apartment blocks sold and replaced by market-rate rentals out of reach for social housing tenants.<\/p>\n
Experts say some 11,000 people across Denmark will have to leave their apartments and find new housing elsewhere by 2030.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effort to diversify neighborhoods might indeed be well intended. Nevertheless, such diversification cannot be achieved by placing an already disadvantaged ethnic group in a less favorable position,\u201d the advocate general said in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, in the present situation, the Danish legislation does precisely that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if the court does not rule in residents\u2019 favor on Thursday, the legal case could still continue in Denmark, Felle said.<\/p>\n
But it would be a serious setback.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would mean that Denmark had carte blanche to adopt as many discriminatory laws as it wants,\u201d said Lamies Nassri of the Center for Muslims\u2019 Rights in Denmark.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt affects the whole country when there are discriminatory laws, especially Muslim citizens who have been particularly marginalized and stereotyped.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COPENHAGEN: The European Court of Justice is to rule Thursday whether a Danish law requiring authorities to redevelop poor urban \u201cghettos\u201d with high concentrations of \u201cnon-Western immigrants and their descendants\u201d is discriminatory. The law means that all social housing estates where more than half of residents are \u201cnon-Western\u201d \u2014 previously defined as \u201cghettos\u201d by the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91183,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171\/revisions\/91183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}