Visiting the Danish Parliament, June 15

The rainy Friday started with a presentation on Iraq by the Ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Mogens Lykketoft. Reflecting on the war in Iraq from a human rights perspective, he went over both the catastrophic situation in Iraq now, and some of the major faulty decisions responsible for the current situation. Amongst them were the decision to install democracy in a failed state by force, the drastic De-Ba'athication measures initiated by Paul Bremer, and the American ignorance of their own limitation - if not technical and military ones, then political ones: Iraq illustrates the case, because the challenge was laying not with the invasion, but with taking control of the country. The former was quite a success, the latter however, proves that not every problem can be solved single-handedly with the US military. Hopefully, in the future there will be more hesitation, before the world embarks on a military project to instill democracies. A lot of questions were raised about the current
responsibilities of the coalition towards the Iraqis, refugees and others, as well as questions on the future path to be taken by the coalition of the willing. The conclusion was that the troops will have to remain for a long time, but that the coalition "went in for the wrong reasons, and is getting out for the wrong reasons".
- Natalie

Meeting a number of speakers within the area of human and minority rights has one disadvantage: They all ? more or less ? agree. With each other. And with us. Meeting Kenneth Kristensen was different. Head of the Danish People's Party youth wing, Kristensen is tough on immigrants, eager to put Danish interests first, and sceptical towards other religions than Christianity. We met him at Christiansborg, seat of the Danish parliament, on a rainy Friday centring on the leader shift in the social liberal "Radical Left" - a party Kristensen "really, really dislikes for letting in 300.000 immigrants who are impossible to integrate". As we spoke with Kenneth Kristensen, the new "Radical Left" leader Margrethe Vestager had already articulated her wish to see a new government "independent of the Danish People's Party". Although a similar wish may exist in our group, the debate with Kenneth Kristensen was calm, yet not without emotions when he concluded that you can't be Danish and Muslim at
the same time. "You have to ask yourself what you're loyal to," Kristensen said. "Is it Denmark? Or is it Islam??

- Mads