The Bosnian-born Danish author Dino Copelj knows better than most how much effort can be put into obtaining citizenship in this country.
In the early 1990s, he spent three years in Danish asylum camps waiting for his application to be approved.
So it is with good authority that he has proclaimed the Irish citizen Billy O’Shea as a “new Danish legend”.
“Billy has just been given a special place in my heart and has become an honorary citizen of my Denmark,” Copelj wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
A matter of principle
Billy, 64, is in Copelj’s opinion ‘honorary citizen’, because he has in principle chosen to say no to the chance of becoming a Danish citizen – a process that usually takes about two years.
He is convinced that the mandatory requirement that all new citizens must lend a hand to the mayor – introduced by the former right-wing government to annoy applicants who are uncomfortable giving a hand to a woman – is a violation of human rights.
“So that was it. I was denied Danish citizenship today because I would not be forced to shake hands with the mayor,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I had given her a hand just before the ceremony, but of course it does not count. I lifted my hat for her, in the traditional Danish sign of respect. But it was voluntary, so again, that does not count. “
Nothing to do with the mayor’s party
The official whose hand Billy refused to press was Cecilia Lonning-Skovgaard, Copenhagen’s mayor of employment and integration – appropriately enough a member of the Liberal Party, the party that led the last government.
According to DR, Billy said to Lonning-Skovgaard: “Mayor, I would very much like to give you a hand, but I do not do it under duress. In my opinion, the greeting is un-Danish, undemocratic and contrary to the constitution. “
Billy, who works as a translator and author, later revealed that he once shook hands with the initiator of the Handshake Act, the former Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs Inger Støjberg – a proof that he will shake hands with anyone!
The difference was on the occasion that he gave his hand voluntarily.
The pressure is rising on the government
It is clear that the pressure is rising on the current Social Democratic government, which came to power in 2019 on the basis of its own tough anti-immigration laws, to repeal the Handshake Act.
In fact, at the beginning of this year, the law was further tightened with the provision that new citizens must shake hands with a mayor. Previously, it only needed to be a representative from the municipality.
Billy’s actions have managed to put the law in the spotlight again. “People must be allowed to set boundaries for their physical contact with other people, and I think that is very basic in a democracy. You have to respect that, ”he explains to DR.
On Facebook, he later pondered: “Of course I knew this was going to happen: an action like this can be easily misunderstood. I hope it will eventually be seen for what it is: a statement of concern about the development of the country where I have spent most of my life and which I have loved ever since I first came here in 1980. In short, it’s not about me. “
Source: The Nordic Page