If you’re American and traveling to Denmark, you may be subject to tighter checks at Danish passport control in the future – and may potentially even need a visa to enter the country.
Danish politicians have expressed their concern – after warnings from U.S. intelligence reports – at terrorists possessing, or attempting to acquire, U.S. passports, which they can then use to gain easier entry into the European Union, including Denmark, in order to commit terrorist attacks. In line with other European countries party to the Schengen agreement, Denmark currently places no conditions (tourists and business travelers can stay 90 days without a visa) on American nationals traveling to Denmark.
This could be about to change.
In a dig at the U.S. War on Terror, a Danish politician said that it was obvious U.S. counter-terrorism efforts had “not been as effective … as we thought,” while the Danish Security and Intelligence Service in a terror assessment report has deemed that: “there is a general terrorist threat against Denmark intensified by the increased focus from militant extremist groups on Denmark.”
At first glance, it might seem strange that Denmark ranks high up on the terror target list, but with Danish troops in Afghanistan (there about 700 stationed there), and after the furor surrounding the publishing, in 2005, of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper – one cartoon even depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban – Denmark has become increasingly wary in recent years of the prospect of terrorist attacks; the cartoons were further reprinted in leading Danish newspapers in February 2008 to the ire of Islamic extremists. The Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was targeted in a terrorist attack in June last year, in which six people were killed - but no Danish citizens.
While the Danish press and politicians alike have raised on high the banner of press freedom, saying that they should not bow to intimidation, it could also be argued that the disrespectful cartoons are not only an unnecessarily provocative act of journalism, but that they also place lives at risk.
The Chicago Conspiracy
Just last month, two men, one of them a U.S. citizen, the other a Pakistani Canadian, were convicted in Chicago of plotting to blow up the newspaper offices of Jyllands-Posten – the same newspaper responsible for publishing the Muhammad cartoons in the first place.
One of the men, who were linked to a Pakistan-based terrorist group, had traveled from Chicago to Denmark twice this year for reconnaissance purposes and had visited the offices of the newspaper in question. Before being caught, he had an airline reservation to fly to Copenhagen for the third, and possibly lethal, time on October 29, 2009.
It is against this backdrop that there are suggestions in Denmark that especially U.S. passport-holders of a “non-ethnic Western” background who had traveled to the Middle East, in particular Pakistan and Afghanistan, come in for tighter scrutiny. It would seem, then, that if the tighter restrictions are imposed, this raises the prospect of two different queues for Americans at Danish immigration control depending on skin color.
With something like half a million Americans visiting Denmark each year, they may in the future be required at the very least to fill out a pre-arrival form; in much the same way as Danish nationals are required to do before arrival in the U.S. At the moment, it’s up to a preliminary police evaluation of the risks and benefits before, and if, any further steps are taken.
But for the general American tourist, even if tighter restrictions are imposed, it would seem that the trip to Legoland you and your kids had so been looking forward to will probably just entail a little bit more paperwork.
Photo of Copenhagen airport by Terry Wha
