Danish Government Approves To Transform Island From Being An Animal Disease Research Center To A Detention Center For Migrants

By Theodore Shoebat

As we reported on before, the Danish government wants to up 125 refugees on the little island of Lindholm, an island that is used solely for animal disease research. Now the Danish government has approved to transform the place into an island detention center for migrants. As we read in a report from DW:

The Danish government will begin holding foreign criminals on a remote island, located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Copenhagen. The controversial plan was included in the 2019 budget proposal, which the legislature approved on Thursday.

Under the measure, some 100 migrant criminals would be sent to Lindholm Island. People with criminal records and those who were denied asylum but cannot be deported due to risk of torture or execution in their home countries would be included.

Denmark has taken a tough stance on immigration in recent years. The center-right government, which governs with the anti-immigration People’s Party, has made notable changes to reduce the flow of migrants.

These include the reduction of benefits for asylum-seekers, shortening temporary residence permits, stepping up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers and granting power to authorities to seize valuables from migrants to help finance the costs of their stay.

Thursday’s budget proposal also includes a cap on family reunification.

“Now we tell people from day one that they should not remain in Denmark for the rest of their lives. They only get temporary shelter until they can return home,” said Peter Skaarup, parliamentary group leader of the Danish People’s Party, when the measure was introduced to the budget law earlier this month.

Lindholm Island has been used as a laboratory and crematory by scientists researching swine flu, rabies and other contagious diseases. The government said it would decontaminate the uninhabited island by late 2019 and open the detention facilities in 2021.

“They are unwanted in Denmark and they must feel that,” said Integration Minister Inger Stojberg in a Facebook post, shortly after the proposal was announced in early December.

The foreign criminals will be allowed to leave the island during the day, but will have to report their whereabouts to authorities and return at night.

Martin Henriksen of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party said that the decision was somewhat inspired by Australia, which currently holds asylum-seekers in detention centers in neighboring Pacific island nations.

But Mikael Smed, the mayor of Vordingborg municipality, where the island is located, was not enthusiastic about the measure. “People think this is not the solution to the real problems,” Smed said prior to Thursday’s parliamentary vote.

UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet had expressed concern about the island measure. “I have serious concerns with this plan and we will monitor it and discuss it … with the government,” Bachelet told journalists in Geneva earlier this month.

“We’ve seen the negative impact of such policies of isolation, and [they] should not replicate these policies. Because depriving them of their liberty, isolating them, and stigmatizing them will only increase their vulnerability,” Bachelet added.

Human rights activists have likewise denounced the decision, calling it degrading and inhumane.

We have written on this plan of the Danish government before. For the sake of this post I will repost the article:

The Danish government wants to force around 125 refugees to be settled on an island — Lindholm Island — off the coast of Denmark. The island was once a center for research on sick animals. Politicians in Denmark who are fixated on immigration are ecstatic about this move.

Immigration minister Inger Støjberg, of the center-right Venstre party, wrote that certain people “are unwanted and they will feel it.”

The measure is set to be put into motion by 2021 as part of an agreement that was reached between Denmark’s center-right government and the popular Right-wing Danish People’s Party. Inger Støjberg wrote on her Facebook page:

“If you are unwanted in Danish society, you should not be a nuisance to ordinary Danes. … Those who have been expelled from crime or in the interests of state security… It happens when we move them to the uninhabited island, Lindholm. They are undesirable in Denmark, and they must feel it!”

An immigration spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, Martin Henriksen, told CNN: “Our hope … is that people outside Denmark will understand that Denmark is not a very attractive place to seek asylum, if you are of refugee background, mean to cause harm, or incite crime.”

The plan still has yet to be passed by parliament, but if it does get accepted, over one hundred refugees with criminal backgrounds will be sent to Lindholm island, just two miles out to sea, a center for research on seriously ill and contagious animals.

Facilities for animal research are planned to be cleared out and replaced by an immigration center fit to house one hundred people. According to the Danish government the migrants who would be placed in this immigration center will have “tolerated stay” status, in that they will not have a residence permit but cannot be deported.  Martin Henriksen said:

“Our approach is that they should stay on the island as much as possible, and if we can keep them there the whole time, we will aim to do that … We plan to have police, prison services, guards and detention cells in place, in case of any unrest.”

Louise Holck, deputy director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, has objected to this plan, affirming:  “It is important to note that these people, while they have committed crimes, have already served their sentence … There is no grounds for detention, and from a human rights perspective, we are not just talking about windows with bars …. We will have to assess that they are not detained de facto.”

Denmark is the first European country to officially announce such a plan. The immigration minister, Martin Henrikson, hopes that such a policy will inspire other European countries:

“I hope it will inspire other countries to do the same … If they want any advice they are always welcome to call. We want other countries to tighten up their rules too. We believe it is in everyone’s interest to do that.”

So this policy is officiating first in Denmark. Its almost like Denmark is being used as an experimental ground for this policy. This is interesting. Denmark was also the experimental ground used by the international Counter-jihad movement to see the effects of their nationalist activism. Over a decade ago, Anders Gravers, the Danish nationalist and partner of the professional provocateur for the anti-immigration movement and the Counter-jihad pioneer, Pamela Geller, wrote of how Denmark was to be the experimental laboratory to see what would work for a full-scale international movement. Under the umbrella of “Stop the Islamization of Europe” Geller’s European partner (SIOE) Anders Gravers wrote:

“We know that Denmark is such a small homogenious country, where the effects are felt quickly, much quicker than in bigger countries. Because of that we believe that Denmark is the perfect place to practice the anti-jihad actions and thereby affect the population, because we get a response right away. Then we can discover which actions will have the greatest affect on the people, and which actions can be copied to other places, USA, Canada, Australia and the rest of Europe”

So in Denmark, the Counter-jihad experimented with a nationalist anti-Muslim movement; and it is also in Denmark where there has first been announced a policy of moving migrants to an island, and with the admission of the immigration minister, they are doing so with the hopes of inspiring the rest of Europe. I cannot emphatically prove that the two are interconnected, but I do know that Denmark has been the laboratory for politically motivated ideas and policies that revolve around immigration (the Counter-jihad and this policy of moving refugees to an island).

Moreover, this policy is being contrived — to a great extent — by the Danish People’s Party, the very party that helped accelerate the Counter-jihad back in 2007. A Counterjihad blogger who calls himself “Conservative Swede” made an interesting statement in a 2007 post about the rise of Counterjihad and how the Danish People’s Party was leading the way for it:

“With the 9/11 attacks and the far-going Islamization of Europe as background, European nationalism is no longer a fringe issue. Now there is real substance to it, and a real critical mass of popular support has emerged, and the good example of the Danish People’s Party has shown the way.”

So the Danish People’s Party helped spark the Counter-jihad in 2007 (the year when the Counter-jihad became an international movement through the Counter-jihad Summit in Brussels) in Denmark — the very country used by the Counter-jihad as an experiment —, and this same party is pushing for this policy of forcing refugees to an island with a spokesperson of the Danish People’s Party stating that he hopes that such an idea will inspire the rest of Europe.

While the migrants will technically have the right to exit the island by ferry to the mainland, they will be required to return back to the island to sleep. The government also wants to make it extremely difficult for the migrants to leave the island. “We are going to make it as cumbersome and as expensive as possible … We are going to minimise the number of ferry departures as much as at all possible,” said Henriksen.

The refugees will be required to sign in each day at the government’s island offices. Failure to do so, it is said, will lead to one’s placement on the island.

Lindholm is a center for veterinary research. It is the home of the prestigious Veterinary Institute of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The Danish government has announced that the Institute will leave the island by 2019 and hand over the keys for the refugee holding center by 2021. As one report by a Danish journalist who visited the island and interviewed its director reads:

“Nobody knows what the future brings to the yellow buildings at Lindholm. No one can answer whether they should be preserved or overturned.

Institute Director Kristian Møller just knows that they start relocating the premises in early 2019. He expects he can hand over the keys by the beginning of 2020, but exactly when he dare not comment.”

So they do not know for certain if the buildings on the island will be demolished, even though there is a concern of infection in the ceiling panels.

Its possible that they will just clean up the island of their labs and that it will be used to house these 100 or so refugees. But it is not far fetched to express some concern about the motivation of putting these people on an island that is owned by the state and that has been used for animal disease research going all the way back to 1930. Why this island? Why take an island that been used for decades as a veterinary research center, dismantle its labs and use it to house a hundred or so refugees?

Professor of Virology Anette Bøtner who has worked at Lindholm for 30 years, also was puzzled when she heard about the plans:

“I was very surprised when I heard about the plans in the news. I never imagined Lindholm would be used for such a thing … If they are to be on an island, you could probably find islands that were better suited. The buildings are not suitable for that purpose. They are generally laboratories”

In Denmark there are about 1,400 islands, of which about 300 are uninhabited. Why this one island? Why the island that has been used for animal research for so many years? And for just 125 people? Could it be that this move is a step towards using people for experiments?

There is an historical parallel.

Last year we wrote a research paper on Germany’s and Turkey’s conspiracy with sparking the refugee crises, in which we wrote on how Germany, during World War One, brought in thousands of Muslim refugee into its country for purpose of military recruitment. However, the camps in Germany that were used to hold these Muslim refugees were not just for this purpose, but also for eugenist research. ‘Researchers’ would enter the camp and actually measure the skulls and the bodies of the Muslim men, a situation that was a part of the eugenist trend that would eventually escalate to the Nazi death camps and the horrific human experiments that would be conducted in the Third Reich. So the Germans used these refugees not just as soldiers, but also for eugenics, and Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) did not care at all.

So is it far fetched to question the motives of the Danish government? No. Do we know for certain what will happen? No. Let us wait and see what will unfold in Europe.