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300 deportation detainees are supposed to serve their sentences in Kosovo. It is not the first attempt to outsource the “stranger problem”, reports SRF correspondent Bruno Kaufmann.
Denmark’s prisons are full. The government assumes that there will be a shortage of around 1,000 places in the next few years. That is why Denmark wants to relocate prisoners to Kosovo. The two countries will sign a corresponding agreement today. Deportation detainees from third countries are to be accommodated in Kosovo. There are currently 348 people in Danish prisons who are about to be deported.
The Danish Justice Minister Nick Hækkerup assured the prison that the same rules apply as in Danish prisons. He is certain that the agreement will stand up to an examination by the European Court of Human Rights.
Legend:
The prison in Gjilan, 50 kilometers from the Kosovar capital Pristina, is said to be under Danish management. It will be operated by Kosovar staff.
Keystone
The plans are controversial, as SRF Northern Europe correspondent Bruno Kaufmann reports. “There is a lot of criticism from the wider public.” Many asked themselves how the promised “Danish prison conditions” could be kept. For example, when it comes to visiting relatives in the distant detention center.
“In addition, there are fundamental concerns about the outsourcing of sovereign, state tasks abroad,” says Kaufmann. “In parliament, however, there is broad consensus on the plans – from the socialists to the nationalists of the Danish People’s Party.”
The Danish government argues that overcrowded prisons made the unusual step necessary. For Kaufmann, however, it is about much more fundamental issues – namely Denmark’s “foreign problem”, which has been a hot political issue in the country for decades.
The correspondent looks back a long way in history. Since Denmark became a democracy and gradually lost its overseas territories, a very unique way of dealing with the foreign has developed: “Democracy and an open society have always been understood as something very homogeneous, embedded in a monolingual society.”
Further “outsourcing attempts”
The country generally struggled with international developments. Foreign and domestic policy are strictly separated, said Kaufmann. “That is why in recent years there have been repeated attempts to isolate rejected foreigners.”
The former bourgeois government first tried to build a deportation prison on a remote island in the Baltic Sea. The plans failed because of the resistance of the local population. The incumbent social democratic government wanted to outsource asylum procedures to Rwanda. These plans did not materialize either.