KABUL: (MEP) Following inflow of the refugees in Denmark, its government has announced a contest to force refugees to hand over their valuables and possessions in order to pay for their accommodation while applying for asylum.
The Danish government has secured a parliamentary majority on Tuesday in favour of legislation that will severely curb the rights of refugees, and is expected to pass the legislation in parliament on Wednesday.
The bill states that asylum seekers who arrive with more than 10,000 kroner in cash “will have to [use] the surplus above 10,000 kroner to pay for their stay”, Danish government spokesman Marcus Knuth told the Guardian.
Local refugee advocates have warned that there are worse aspects to the new law than the articles concerning refugees’ belongings. If passed, the law will prevent most Syrian refugees from being granted more than one year’s sanctuary, unless they can prove that they are individually under threat in Syria which has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy and a terror campaign by Islamic State militants for over four years. Parents who arrive without their children will have to wait at least three years before they can apply to be reunited with their family.
Michala Clante Bendixen, chair of Refugees Welcome in Denmark, said: “It means that most of these families will be separated for up to five years. First they’ll have to wait for the asylum application to go through, then there will be 3 years of waiting, then they’ll have to apply for reunification. Separating families for five years is completely crazy.”
The move is the latest attempt by Denmark’s centre-right government to roll back its obligations to refugees. Last month, the prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, called for an end to the UN 1951 refugee convention, a law created in the aftermath of the Holocaust – a suggestion the UN said would “renounce millennia” of human progress.
Denmark has recently imposed strict border checks, forcing more refugees back to Germany. Denmark accepted about 20,000 refugees in 2015, which is only two percent of the total who arrived in Europe last year.
