Sunday, September 02, 2007

Riots in Copenhagen - Again


Last night Nørrebro - a part of Copenhagen - was once again set ablaze by youths protesting their eviction from The Youth House six months ago. The young people who calls themselves "autonome" are part of the extreme and violent left wing fringe.

They used to have a house borrowed by the Municipality of Copenhagen, but after scores of riots and demonstrations the City sold the house and had the police clear it. The youth didn't leave peacefully to say the least, and last night was a reenactment of the vandalizing and looting by by about a thousand protesters.

The protesters were reinforced by gangs of young Muslims according to press.

Pictures are by Niels Hougaard, photographer at Jyllands-Posten. A Gallery can be found here.

Police responded with teargas to spread the crowd


Looting - a perfectly reasonable protest.


64 arrests were made


Footage from the looting and vandalizing of two ordinary supermarkets has been uploaded by the daily "Ekstra Bladet" here.

"Multi-nationals" such as McDonalds and 7-Eleven are frequently and ritually smashed in that part of town as they are seen as symbols of global capitalism, but this time the victims included a lingerie shop, a coffee shop and a Pet store as can be seen here.

This last one shows locals desperately putting out fires before it spreads to parked cars.
The man being interviewed basically says: "What do I think of this? I think it's all f*cked-up! (Sorry, but that's what he says).
The policeman who later shows up apologizes for the lack of fire fighters, but "they have there hands full all over the place!"

All in all, a busy night for the cops. And a busy day for the shop owners cleaning up the ruins of their livelihood. Some of the arrested were as young as 13. Nice job by the parents.

Needless to say, the socialists at City Hall are demanding that the City give the vandals a house. Only that will stop the violence, the logic goes. Well, I for one can think of a suitable house. I believe Alcatraz is uninhabited at the moment.

2 comments:

Yankee Doodle said...

"Needless to say, the socialists at City Hall are demanding that the City give the vandals a house. Only that will stop the violence, the logic goes. Well, I for one can think of a suitable house. I believe Alcatraz is uninhabited at the moment."

Most excellent!

Great post! Blog more often!

Send me an email, too. The address is on my blog.

Anonymous said...

Even the wikipedia link mentions the "middle eastern" character of Norrebro. I must admit that I haven't been in that part of Copenhagen since the late 1980's. But it was a middle-class type area and had some offices (where I was visiting for business). I was always warned to stay away from Christiana - looks like the no-go area has moved.