Yesterday in Copenhagen, like hundreds of thousands of others around the world, some 15,000 people took part in a demonstration to protest the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and generally against police brutality and racism (DK). The demonstration, which was arranged by Black Lives Matter Denmark, began across the street from the US Embassy, and the attendees marched to the city center and gathered again in front of the Parliament building. 

The marchers chanted slogans such as “No justice, no peace. Prosecute the police!” But in contrast to developments in many American cities, the protest remained peaceful. It did not appear to contain radical elements from the Autonomous movement, Denmark’s equivalent of Antifa, which have committed vandalism in past demonstrations in Copenhagen. The police tweeted their thanks to the participants for not going amuck. The protest was also aimed at racism in Denmark. Its manifestations may not be as bad as in the US, said some participants, but it also exists in here. One participant spoke of being bullied and harassed and of receiving mail every week with messages such as “N****r pig, go home!”

Systemic racism in Denmark

In the Deadline interview program (DK) yesterday evening, Moussa Mchangama, the chair of Mino Danmark, an organization that promotes opportunities for ethnic minorities, noted that Denmark doesn’t have the same problem with police violence as the US but Floyd’s death has raised awareness that the racism it exemplified is a global phenomenon. Mchangama said that the wave of protests has taken off internationally and in Denmark because such incidents have occurred so many times that people cannot ignore the structural, systematic racism that exists here as well as in the United States. 

Also on the program was Vincent Hendriks (DK), Professor of Philosophy at University of Copenhagen, whose father, a black American, immigrated to Denmark in the 1960s. Hendriks observed that the demonstrations have grown very quickly after this instance of police abuse partly because people have been subjected for months to the coronavirus pandemic, which has hurt minorities and poor people more than others and which has exposed and exacerbated the inequality of wealth and income that have been growing for years.

The virus is still out there

With such a large gathering, healthcare researchers worried that the event could lead to a rise in coronavirus infections, noting that in such situations, a single infected person can pass the virus on to many others. Political events are exempt from the limit on gatherings because freedom of assembly is considered a fundamental democratic right. Today, which begin phase 3 of the reopening of the economy, the limit on gatherings was raised from ten to 50.

Officials hoped that participants would follow the healthcare guidelines and keep a distance from one another. A few of the marchers wore face masks, which have never been mandatory in Denmark. Some appeared to try to maintain one or two meters’ distance from the others, but most of them walked and stood very close to others and did not seem to worry that their chanting also increased the chances that the virus could spread. The only mitigating factor was  that the great majority of the participants were young people, who are relatively resistant to the coronavirus.