Copenhagen: Despite widespread condemnation, Denmark's parliament is expected to vote Tuesday in favour of drastic reforms curbing asylum seekers' rights, including delaying family reunifications and confiscating migrants' valuables.
The country has insisted the new law is needed to stem the flow of refugees even though Denmark and Sweden recently tightened their borders, a move that prompted Germany and Austria to turn back new arrivals heading for Scandinavia.
While international outrage has focused on a proposal allowing police to seize cash and valuables from refugees to help pay for their stay in asylum centres, rights activists have blasted a proposed three-year delay for family reunifications which they say breaches international conventions.
The plan has "a particularly bitter connotation in Europe, where the Nazis confiscated large amounts of gold and other valuables from Jews and others," The Washington Post wrote.
Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the right-wing Venstre party has shrugged off criticism by calling it "the most misunderstood bill in Denmark's history", seemingly more concerned with opinion polls that show 70 percent of Danes rank immigration as their top political concern.
"Rasmussen has to be elected in Denmark... not (by) the international media," Bjarne Steensbeck, a political commentator at public broadcaster DR, told AFP.
AFP
