In the fall of 2021, Danish Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad (Social Democratic Party) introduced a bill that will enable the reactionary Danish state to evict entire families from their apartments for trifles. Social housing associations will thus be obliged to terminate leases and evict entire households from their apartments if even one of the residents has been convicted of a crime. This law comes against the backdrop of the so-called "ghetto laws" that have already come into force in Denmark in 2019.
The new draft law even stipulates that an eviction may be prepared as soon as an indictment is filed, and ultimately the verdict in the first instance will be sufficient to make it final. Even if the defendant appeals, the eviction may be enforced, even if the defendant is not officially considered convicted at that time. What else this has to do with the so-called rule of law is questionable, and at the same time, the proposed law constitutes collective punishment, as entire families may be evicted from their homes.
The "Ghetto Law" of 2019
Already in 2019, Denmark introduced the "Ghetto Laws", which were justified under the pretext of preventing and dissolving so-called parallel societies. For this purpose, various neighborhoods, different cities of Denmark were classified as "ghettos", whose residents since then are subject to special laws. These neighborhoods are mainly the poorest proletarian neighborhoods in the country. Many migrants from the oppressed nations of West Asia and Africa live in these areas. They are seen as a danger to the imperialist Danish state because they are the ones who are most oppressed and thus have the greatest urge to rebel against it. The answer that the state has given with its "ghetto laws" is to create even more oppression. As early as the spring of 2021, the Ministry of the Interior formulated a goal of limiting the percentage of residents of "non-Western" origin in any neighborhood in Denmark to no more than 30 percent by 2030.
Thus, "ghetto residents" face double the penalties if they break the law. "Ghetto parents" are required to take their children, as soon as they reach the age of one, to a children's educational institution for five hours a day, where the children are to be taught "Danish values" and educated from an early age according to bourgeois ideology.
An essential part of the laws is also the plan to demolish entire neighborhoods, relocate the residents and turn the former "problem districts" into good neighborhoods. The "social mixing" is to be promoted in order to divide the deepest and broadest masses, not to have them all in one heap and thus to deprive the oppressed of their power. For this purpose, entire blocks have already been razed to the ground or rents in working-class neighborhoods have been raised so massively that housing has become unaffordable. Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad's new bill is in line with this, further exacerbating the situation of the Danish working class and showing how reactionary the Danish state is under Social Democratic leadership.
