Copenhagen riots, what the f**k is going on there?

[Craig de Tering]

Thought I'd ask our own locals over there what the hell is going on.
There's only very little news coming out and reaching us here through local media and the BBC.
Last I heard the city's going into day 3 of heavy rioting with almost 200 leftie anarchists and sympathizers arrested and the "city looking like a war zone" according to the BBC.

What do the Danes themselves think? What's the big deal with this so-called Ungdomshuset squatter hotel.
The thing that freaks me out a bit is the unrest is spreading to other capitals around here like Stockholm, Oslo and support ralies are being held in Berlin, Helsinki and other places.
What gives?

[Subtilo]

Yup, Copenhagen is burning these days, that I can promise you! I'm quite busy today but will post some thoughts about the situation soon. One thing is for sure - the riots will continue for days, maybe even weeks. Just heard the news: by now the police have arrested 570 people!!!

For now I'll post some links:

http://indymedia.dk/newswire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset

BTW: I live about 1 kilometer from Ungdomshuset, the smell of burning stuff (rubber, wood, bikes, cars, trash, containers) is rather heavy.

[Subtilo]

Some visuals ...

http://ekstrabladet.dk/gallerier/article276761.ece#1

http://politiken.dk/fotografier/bill...ervice=gallery

[capkanada]

:shock:

Well... hope you can stay safe, man. Doesn't sound like too happy of a scene.

Be careful!

[Zero]

This seems to be, basically, the outcome of ignoring a politically unstable situation for too long. From what I understand, that region of Copenhagen has been a quasi-independent anarchist commune since 1982, allowed to exist conditional upon the normal payment of taxes, etc, but otherwise exempt from most civil and criminal law. Something like that is bound to explode, really. This isn't, of course, an attempt to validate or justify either the state's or the anarchists' position, but simply making the observation that it was a timebomb which was waiting to go off - the situation which put it in motion (the christian group buying the property) is largely irrelevant. You can't sustain an anarchist enclave in a metropolitan capital indefinitely - there is pressure from without to exercise legal power to upset it and pressure from within to abuse the good faith of the arrangement. In this case it was the former that caused it to explode, but it could well have been the latter. This is characteristic of any "us and them" situation where the balance of power is uneven. Allowing it to establish itself in the city saved somebody a tough decision in 1982 but it sowed the seeds for a much larger problem later. Lessons learned...