Yearbook 2019
 Denmark. At the June 5 parliamentary election, which had
been announced by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen on May
7, the Social Democrats became the largest party with almost
26% of the vote and 48 seats. The red-green bloc together
received a majority of 51.7% (if the green alternative was
counted), which led to the Social Democratic party leader
Mette Frederiksen after three weeks forming a minority
government with support from social liberal Radical Venstre
(8.5%), red-green Socialist People's Party (7.6%) and the
Left Party Enhedslisten (6.8%). The second largest party in
the election was outgoing Prime Minister Lars Løkke
Rasmussen's Liberal Conservative Venstre, who despite an
increase of four percentage points and just over 23% of the
vote and 48 seats could not continue to govern. Rasmussen's
block only got about 75 seats, compared to the government
parties 91,
In the EU elections, Venstre made a successful election
with 23.5% of the vote (same as in the general election),
Social Democrats ended up at 21.5%, Socialist People's Party
13%, Danish People's Party 11%, Radical Left 10%,
Conservative People's Party 6% and the Unity List 5.5%.
Other parties included the People's Movement against the EU,
which received 3.7% and the Alternative, which received
3.4%.
After the election loss, former Prime Minister Lars Løkke
Rasmussen resigned as party leader for Venstre in early
September. Jakob Ellemann-Jensen was elected new chairman.
He is the son of Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, who led Venstre from
1984 to 1998 and was also the country's foreign minister.
According to
CountryAAH, eight people were killed in a train accident on the Stora
Bält bridge on January 2 when a passenger train on the way
to Copenhagen collided with a freight train on the way to
the island of Funen. It was an empty truck trailer on the
freight train that overturned, probably because of the harsh
winds, and hit the passenger side of the train.
In February, the Folketing passed a legislative package
on a more restrictive migration policy. Perhaps the most
noteworthy proposal was that the uninhabited island of
Lindholm in Stege Bugt between Zealand and Møn would become
an expulsion center. However, the newly-appointed Social
Democratic government shrank these plans in late June. At
the same time, the government announced that it would follow
the UN's directive on quota refugees.
In August, the Danish government announced that it would
strengthen the border with Sweden. The reason was the
increased gang crime in the neighboring country. On August
6, a bomb had exploded at the Danish Tax Agency at Nørrebro
in Copenhagen. Later, two Swedes in their 20s were arrested
on suspicion of the offense. In November, Denmark began to
randomly check the transfers from Sweden to Denmark,
including at the Öresund connection.
A less diplomatic crisis erupted in August when US
President Donald Trump, who according to White House adviser
Larry Kudlow "knows one thing or another about real estate
deals", announced that he wanted to buy Greenland from
Denmark. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's comments that
she did not want to discuss a sale of Greenland at all led
Trump to postpone his planned state meeting "to another
time" (he had himself asked to meet Queen Margrethe) in
early September.
Following the Turkish invasion of Syria in October, the
risks of imprisoned members of the Islamic State (IS)
increased to escape from the area and move to their home
countries and continue the fight there. At the end of
October, therefore, the Folketing voted in favor of the
possibility of depriving IS supporters of dual citizenship
of their Danish citizenship.
2006 Danish war crimes in Afghanistan send Fogh in the
offensive - against the media
In December 2006, the Danish documentary «The Secret War»
revealed that Danish elite soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002
extradited Afghan prisoners of war for torture on North
American bases in the country. Denmark had thereby committed
a breach of both the Geneva Convention and the UN Torture
Convention, which prohibits one country from transferring
prisoners of war to another, and imposes full responsibility
on the prisoners' situation. Although Danish soldiers did
not carry out torture themselves, Denmark was guilty of
torture by extraditing prisoners to torture in North
American captivity. On the same occasion, it was revealed
that both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense in
both 2002 and 2003 led the Parliament behind the light with
allegations that Denmark had not handed prisoners
of war to the United States and that the United
Statestorture not used. The opposition demanded an
impartial investigation into the events, which however was
routinely rejected by the Prime Minister, who may well
remember that in January 1993 the Schlüter government was
convicted of an independent investigation of the Tamil case,
and two years before he himself had been convicted as a
Minister of Taxation after an impartial one. examination of
his activities as minister.
The government wanted to close the torture case as soon
as possible. It therefore came across that North American
officers in Danish media confirmed that the United States
had used torture on the base in Afghanistan to which the
Danish forces had been linked. Likewise, it came across that
Danish soldiers from the Afghan mission contradicted the
government when it claimed that Danish soldiers had not
carried Danish flags as identification marks. In late
January, the government's desperation led Prime Minister
Rasmussen to attack Danish Radio for its coverage of the
torture case. The attack was unprecedented and was therefore
also compared to attacks on freedom of expression in
totalitarian regimes. The Prime Minister showed an
unprecedented lack of understanding that there should be
room for different attitudes within the framework of a
democracy. 1½ years earlier, the man would in no case
comment on 12 drawings in the Jutland Post, because
it would be "restricting the newspaper's freedom of
expression". The attack on DR was immediately seconded by
the government's support party, the Danish People's Party,
whose party leader declared that "now the DR should be
cleaned up".
Due to the fact that the comprehensive report on Denmark
during the Cold War did not designate the Social Democracy
and the labor movement as agents of the Soviet Union, the
VKO government decided, as part of the 2007 Financial Law
Agreement, to set up a special political center to
disseminate its own history of the Cold War. As head of the
center, the politically charged cold warrior, Bent Jensen,
was hired. Already two weeks before his employment on
February 1, 2007, Jensen went on the run and published in
the Jutland Post that information that the former
journalist at the newspaper Information, Jørgen
Dragsdahl in the 1980's had allegedly been a spy for the
KGB. The claim was raised after Jensen had access to PET's
archives. Archives that are not even the victim Dragsdahl
could access.The extra leaflet had previously made
similar claims, which subsequently lost a lawsuit, and had
to pay compensation of DKK 180,000 to Dragsdahl. Bent Jensen
lost two years later the injury case Dragsdahl brought.
Jensen made his friends in the government pay the fine. In
2013, Denmark's most right-wing court, Østre Landsret,
overturned the Jensen judgment.
In June 2008, the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan,
was bombed. The attack was entirely predictable, and had
long been predicted by FE and PET, which had sharpened their
threat assessments against Denmark. Already 2½ years ago,
Copenhagen's Social Democratic Mayor Ritt Bjerregård had
pointed out that "the one who sows the wind is reaping the
storm", citing the VKO government's warfare in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Since then, the VKO government had further
placed Denmark on the world map as a country leading a
fanatical anti-Muslim policy. Officially, the VKO government
led this so-called "activist foreign policy" (= war) to
"promote democracy" and "fight terrorism". However, many
observers in and outside Denmark believed that the VKO
government's policy promoted terror. This debate wanted the
Radical Left's wife, Margrethe Vestager, to travel
immediately after the Islamabad attack. Likewise, the
chairman of the board of Grundfos, Niels Due Jensen, wished
to point out that the government's policy in the Middle East
was particularly detrimental to the Danish business
community. In the previous 2½ years, Denmark's exports to
the area had fallen below half the level before 2006, which
must be seen in the light of the image created by the Danish
government. However, both Vestager and Due Jensen were both
instructed by the government that they "went about the
terrorists' task" by raising the debate at all.
|
