Copenhagen is a soft, prosperous city, which has had a soft spot for squatters since the 1960’s. But there is steel beneath the acceptance – the Danes have a turbulent, fighting history and are proud of their resistance to the Nazis.

Hitching down from Sweden to Germany many years ago, I was picked up by a middle aged man in a tiny, battered car and we fell to talking about the war. He was a teenager around 1940, the perfect age to be picked up as slave labour. Did they come for you? Yes. What did you do? “I went in the forest”. He hid for two and a half years, with thousands of other people.

The Copenhagen squatting community of Christiania grew on abandoned military land in 1971, and still houses 800 people in a semi-autonomous collective. The Wikipedia entry makes hilarious reading as the history of the place follows both the assault of the real world, the ongoing drug problems for an anarchistic community, and the gradual ageing of its idealists.

With a right wing government in Denmark, the authorities have moved in with an array of ingenious bureaucratic plans, including the abolition of collective property which looks like the Canberra assault on Indigenous country and homelands.

“The first step in this process was a police crackdown on the drug trade. Both politicians and police have declared that the drug trade will not be allowed to return. The second (and currently ongoing) phase is the registration of all buildings in Christiania. The third step will be the demolition of a number of shacks, constructed in a nature-preserved area (the historic naval fortress of Copenhagen). These buildings had all been approved by the authorities before the new government passed the current law on Christiania. For the last 15 years the government has not allowed construction in Christiania. This is now being enforced as a zero-tolerance policy with the help of a massive police presence. This is regarded by Christiania community as a government strategy to undermine the collective self-government of Christiania. They believe the Government is planning to sell out building rights to private enterprises [11], in an attempt to force the freetown to accept the paradigm of private ownership and market capitalization of private property. The 900 or so inhabitants of Christiania have staked a claim for collective rights of use to all of Christiania, but this has been ignored by the government “

Christiania was a late developmet in the movement. The Ungdomshuset or “Youth House” in a suburb called Nørrebro had been the centre of resistance for nearly a century. Begun in 1897 as “The People’s House” to support the labour movement, it fell in and out of progressive hands and slowly decayed until it was assigned by the municipality to a group of young people in 1982. After relations deteriorated, the place was on-sold to a Christian cult called Faderhuset despite the sign on the front which read “For sale along with 500 autonome, stone throwing, violent psychopaths from hell.”

The Christians have been in and out of court to get the building, even though a trust wanted to buy it from them at a handsome profit. Wikipedia takes up the story:

“On 16 December, around 2000 activists, some of them foreigners, demonstrated in Copenhagen in support of Ungdomshuset. The police had not been notified of the demonstration. Many of the demonstrators wore maskings or helmets which is not permitted by law during demonstrations in Denmark. The police ordered the demonstration to break up and the demonstrators to disperse. The demonstrators attacked the police; rocks and fireworks were thrown at the police and local shops were destroyed. The demonstration degenerated into what the police characterised as the worst riots in Denmark in many years — they used teargas, which is a very rare occurrence in Denmark.[12] The community was vandalized, and later looted.[13] Both police and demonstrators were injured.

By the end of the night, around 300 people had been arrested.[12] The majority of those arrested were released the following day, 17 December.[14][15] The total number of demonstrators arrested is amongst the highest for a single event in Denmark since World War II. The fury of the demonstrators has been described by the police as the worst since 18 May 1993, when another violent demonstration (this time against Danish EU membership) by the extreme left injured 92 officers and 11 demonstrators. Subsequently the head of the public information department at the police has characterised the autonome demonstraters and squatters as comparable to a “fascist organisation”, which does not hesitate to resort to “violence and vandalism”.[16]“

In other words, the fight was on for young and old. The police attacked on the first of March:

“Ungdomshuset was cleared of its occupants by the police at about 0700 (CET) in the morning. A 50 metre area surrounding the building was sealed off. The building was taken with assistance from a military helicopter, an airport crash tender and two boom cranes, used as a form of modern day siege towers. Special forces entered the building from the roof, the windows and the ground, while the house was covered in foam to diminish the effectiveness of possible counter attacks such as molotov cocktails. Afterwards the supporters of Ungdomshuset announced that it was “either an Ungdomshus or a battle for an Ungdomshus — the clearing will never be forgiven”. This resulted in the break out of rioting, including the blocking of Nørrebrogade, the main street of Nørrebro, and fires were started in the area surrounding Freetown Christiania and the area south of Nørrebrogade itself. Riot police used tear gas on several occasions throughout the riots; more specifically CS gas (2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile) gas.[17]

On 3 March 2007, there was more rioting outside Ungdomshuset,[18] and by 00:36 local time, the area of Nørrebro was completely overrun. At the same time further riots were taking place in the area around Freetown Christiania. Rioters used cars and rubbish bins to build barricades and set fires on the streets. A fire spread to a nearby kindergarten[19] but the fire was quickly extinguished.[20] In a secondary school, the library and media room were ransacked and books and computers were burned on the street. Cost of the damages at the school are estimated to be around 1 million Danish kroner (135,000 euro).[21]

In the morning of 3 March 2007 police raided 6 to 8 addresses in Nørrebro in an attempt to find and deport foreign activists.[22] Although foreigners were the primary target of these raids, a larger number of those arrested were Danes. The members of Ungdomshusets legal support group (retsgruppen) are supposedly amongst those arrested, but police describe that as ‘purely coincidental’.[23]

Demolition of Ungdomshuset began at 8:00 am on 5 March 2007.[1][2] A demolition crane started its work at the back of the house with the top floor. The crane was spray-painted and all workers wore masks to conceal their identity. The union which favors Ungdomshuset, was on the ground trying to persuade the workers to stop working and reveal the company they were working for. At 10am the the Danish Working Environment Authority (Arbejdstilsynet) and had the demolition interrupted due to reported concerns about dust and presence of asbestos. The demolition resumed at 11 am, when the report turned out groundless. At 4 pm, about one third of the house had been removed. The demolition was broadcast live by webcam on TV2 News’ website.[1]“

As the BBC said

‘The districts of Noerrebro and Christiania were left looking like a war zone after barricades and cars were set on fire.”

A Guardian blog says

“Copenhagen is burning. For four days the downtown area of the Danish capital has looked like a war zone. At least 690 people have been arrested, many of them younger than 18… Such was the ferocity when the conflict culminated Friday and Saturday night that several parts of Copenhagen were rioting simultaneously. From Nørrebro, where Ungdomshuset is situated, to Christianshavn, where the free town of Christiania is, sleepy Copenhagen was transformed into something reminiscent of Belfast in the bad old days. International riot supporters from Sweden, Germany and Holland arrived by their hundreds and Danish police had to borrow vehicles from neighbouring Sweden to cope with the ever-increasing numbers of arrests. Police officers have been wounded, as have many protesters, members of the press have been beaten up and cars and houses set on fire…”

It is fair to say the Danish Right really, really hates the squatting movement and the institutionalisation of a hippy subculture in Copenhagen. For 30 year they have fought to “normalise” the occupied communities. But both the police and the resistors seem to have laid into each other with a certain joy.

‘When the police struck in the early hours of Thursday – air lifting special units unto the roof of the house – the squatters were taken by surprise. But their intentions were clear. The place was littered with barbed wire, Molotov cocktails and stones. They did not intend to give in without a fight and, when evicted, the fight was taken to the streets where it has been ongoing for days now.”

The reasons for all this thugging are being picked over enthusiastically in the comments section of the blog.

Me, I’m fond of the communities created by normalising squatting, having lived in one for several years in London.

The fighting, by the way, is being blamed on outside agitators.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 10:31 pm and is filed under ideas and society, world politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.