Danish police clash with radical squatters
About 100 youths attacked Danish police with stones at a derelict school, television reports said Friday, after a day of running street battles against the forced eviction of squatters.
Police used tear gas to disperse the youths and closed off the area in the capital Copenhagen's notoriously rough Noerrebro district to stop supporters joining them, TV2 television said.
Earlier up to 1,000 youths, some of them masked, had attacked police with stones, bottles, pots of paint and firecrackers, and also set up barricades, lit fires and overturned vehicles.
Police arrested more than 160 people, including minors and 17 foreigners, during the riots, which broke out after a dawn raid on the Ungdomshuset youth centre in the district.
It was not known how many people were injured. One person was known to have been injured during the morning riots and was hospitalised, police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said.
TV2 reported that he was a German citizen who had suffered head injuries.
The Noerrebro neighbourhood is home to a large population of young radicals and squatters and is the scene of regular flare-ups with police.
In May 1993, bloody clashes erupted following Denmark's "yes" vote to the Maastricht treaty that led to the creation of the European Union and the euro single currency.
By late Thursday the violence had spread out from Noerrebro to the nearby district of Christianshavn.
Christianshavn is next to the so-called "free city" of Christiania, an autonomous community in the city set up more than 30 years ago.
The four-storey Ungdomshuset cultural centre at the centre of the violence has been a haven for rebels, punks and squatters since the 1980s, when it was given to them by the city of Copenhagen.
The building was recently sold to a fundamental Christian sect, which has demanded the eviction of the youths. The sect plans to tear the building down.
An August 2006 court ruling ordered the occupants to be evicted from the centre, which they insist belongs to them.
The Ungdomshuset website says the group is run along five simple guidelines: no sexism, no "heterosexism" -- prejudice in favour of heterosexuals -- no racism, no hard drugs and no violence.
The no violence heading reads: "Violence is a common means of oppression and we do not tolerate it. There is always a greater force than any individual -- our unity."
It goes on: "Of course we see a difference between violence being used to oppress others and defending oneself against it."
One Noerrebro resident described the operation as something resembling "the dismantling of a terrorist network."
Some onlookers at the scene were critical of the Danish police action.
Kristina Ilsoe, a Roskilde University professor who watched the events with her three-year-old son at her side, said she was "sad, like most of the neighbours, to see so-called tolerant Denmark not leave room for those who don't fit the norm."
Some banks and stores in the area barricaded their entrances to protect their businesses.
Police meanwhile said they were re-establishing border controls to prevent an influx of supporters from other countries, in particular southern neighbour Germany.
AFP
