Denmark: Rebellion Breaks Out in Aarhus

By Peter Cherry

Earlier this month in Denmark, the people in Gellerupparken (a large proletarian neighborhood in West Aarhus) reacted with revolutionary violence after the police shot a man during an anti-fascist demonstration, because he threatened a fascist named Rasmus Paludan who was provoking those in the neighborhood. Paludan leads a fascist party called Stram Kurs (“Hard Line”) which has been attacking immigrant neighborhoods and demanding the deportation of Muslim immigrants living in Denmark.  

The police statement gives a picture of the night’s events: “Our patrols observed late in the evening and early in the night many youths, also very young ones, on the streets in Brabrand. Several containers and one car were set ablaze and several times rocks were thrown at police cars and fireworks set off on the street, but no policemen were hit.”

 Throughout the night several arrests were made, including a 16-year-old who was charged for throwing rocks at police by a skate park in Tinesvej in Braband, a 15-year-old who was charged with violence for setting off a rocket, and a 18-year-old for shouting at a police patrol.

These rebellious acts in Aarhus are not the only ones, as the people have fought the police in multiple places in Copenhagen during Ramadan. The people have fought when the police attempt to stop community gatherings celebrating the holiday days. In Vollsmose, a concentrated and explosive proletarian neighborhood of Denmark, there are also struggles: “Burnings and stone throwings in Bogeparken. 28^th of April. The police came to see high flames from a fire on some plains in Bogeparken. Here the police met a group of youths burning various wooden trash. When the police came, the youths masked themselves and some began throwing rocks at the police. The police managed to arrest two of the persons involved in the fire. They have been charged, interrogated and released again.”

Aarhus is one of many examples of the people standing up in rebellion as a result of their oppression. Like many popular neighborhoods where the working class live, the bourgeois state helps create the conditions for rebellion through the hatred its police inspire.