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Convicted ex-immigration minister Støjberg vows to return from parliamentary expulsion

Denmark's parliament on Tuesday voted to expel former migration minister Inger Støjberg, who was convicted last week of violating migrants' rights by separating asylum-seeking couples.

Published: 22 December 2021 10:48 CET
A majority in the Danish parliament on December 21st voted to fire convicted ex-minister Inger Støjberg from the chamber.
A majority in the Danish parliament on December 21st voted to fire convicted ex-minister Inger Støjberg from the chamber. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

Following a lengthy debate, 98 members voted for her immediate expulsion and 18 against, making her the first parliamentarian to be kicked out in 30 years.

Støjberg, who was handed a 60-day jail term by a special court last week though is unlikely to serve any time in prison, had to leave the chamber immediately, waving goodbye as she stepped away.

“I would rather be voted out by my colleagues here in parliament for trying to protect some girls than voted out by the Danish people for turning a blind eye,” she told reporters after exiting the chamber.

However, she said she was open to returning to politics. She is free to return to parliament should she be given a mandate by voters at the next election, scheduled to take place in 2023.

“I don’t think you should expect this to be the last word from me,” she told reporters.

Her order to separate asylum-seeking couples when the woman was under 18 with no individual examination of the cases was found to have violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

READ ALSO: Danish ex-minister gets prison sentence in impeachment trial

In 2016, the government separated 23 couples on Støjberg’s orders without examining their cases following instructions from the minister. 

The policy was found to be unlawful because the action was taken without allowing for exceptions or consideration of individual circumstances.

The couples, most of whom had only a small age difference, were then placed in different centres while their cases were reviewed.

In seven of the cases, staff at the centres reported that the separated asylum seekers experienced suicidal thoughts or attempted to kill themselves.

Most political parties were in favour of removing the 48-year-old self-styled champion of “Danish values”, a hugely popular politician who served as minister from 2015 to 2019.

“It is not compatible with being a member of the parliament to receive a prison sentence,” said Karsten Lauritzen, parliamentary chairman of the Liberals (Venstre), the party Støjberg left in February.

Since 1953, only four members of parliament have been excluded.

Støjberg has insisted the policy was designed to fight against forced marriages and said after her trial that she was “being punished for trying to protect the girls”, while not commenting on the similar ages of most of the couples.

As minister, Støjberg was at the forefront as Denmark’ centre-right government, propped up by the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DF), tightened restrictive migration policies from 2015-2019.

She passed a law allowing for migrants’ assets to be confiscated to finance their care in Denmark and boasted of having passed more than 110 amendments restricting the rights of foreigners.

She also published a picture of herself with a cake to celebrate the passing of a 50th law curbing immigration; called for the public to report pizzerias where staff did not speak Danish; and told a false story about a daycare banning pork from children’s lunches.

Conversely, she was the architect of an apprenticeship system which was praised by companies for helping them bring refugees onto Denmark’s labour market.

Since leaving government and the Liberal party, she has echoed former US president Donald Trump by using the phrase “drain the swamp” when addressing a demonstration against the current government.

Despite the election of the Social Democrats to power two years ago, the Scandinavian country still has one of the most restrictive migration policies in Europe.

READ ALSO: OPINION: Why reaction to Støjberg verdict is important for democracy in Denmark

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POLITICS

EXPLAINED: How AI deep fakes are bringing new tensions to Danish politics

Denmark's culture minister said on Monday he hoped to use copyright law to bring an end to the controversial new trend of using deep fake videos in politics. Here's the background.

Published: 13 May 2024 15:13 CEST
EXPLAINED: How AI deep fakes are bringing new tensions to Danish politics

Jakob Engel-Schmidt, who represents the Moderate Party, warned that the technique, used in recent videos by the far-right Danish People’s Party and libertarian Liberal Alliance were the “top level of  a slippery slope that could end up undermining our trust in one another and making every political message, newspaper article and artistic publication a potential battleground for whether it is true or false”. 

Which parties have used deepfake video in campaigning? 

The Danish People’s Party at the end of last month issued an AI-generated deepfake video showing a spoof speech in which Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen appeared to announce that Ascension Day, Easter and Christmas would no longer be public holidays, and that they would all be replaced by the Muslim festival of Eid as the country’s only holiday. 

This was a satirical reference to the government’s unpopular decision to abolish Store bededag, or “Great Prayer Day” as a public holiday. 

The video was clearly labelled as AI-generated, and ends with the Danish People’s Party’s leader, Morten Messeschmidt, awakening from a nightmare. 

The Liberal Alliance also released a video for Great Prayer Day, in which it used AI to turn Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S), Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen (V) and Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) into eccentric-looking characters similar to those in the film’s of the US director Wes Anderson.

What kind of a stir have the videos caused in Denmark? 

Denmark’s Minister for Digitization, Marie Bjerre, who represents the centre-right Liberal Party, was sharply critical of the Danish People’s Party’s move. 

“I think it is way over the line for the Danish People’s Party to make a deepfake of a political opponent. I don’t think it’s proper either, and they shouldn’t do it,” she said. “It is also a problem for our democracy and society. Because with deepfakes, you can create material that looks extremely credible, which means that you can really spread misinformation. That is why it is also very serious that the Danish People’s Party is using deepfake for this kind of thing.” 

She said that such videos should only be allowed if the organisation making or distributing them have received consent from the person depicted. 

“If you want to make deepfakes of people, you must ask for permission. That will be the proper way to do it,” she said. 

Messerschmidt defended the video as light-hearted satire that at the same time educated Danish people about the new technology. 

“What we can do is show Danes how to use the new technologies and how to use them in a good way, like here in an entertaining and satirical way,” he said. 

Although Engel-Schmidt said he was concerned about the use of deepfake videos in politics, he acknowledged that the light-hearted videos released by the two parties were in themselves unlikely to deceive anyone.  

How does Engel-Schmidt hope to regulate such deepfake videos? 

He said he aimed to see whether copyright law could be used to regulate such videos.

Presumably this would mean seeing whether, under law, people have a right to the use of the own image, personality or voice, and can therefore forbid them from being used without permission. 

What do the experts say? 

Christiane Vejlø, one of Denmark’s leading experts on the relationship between people and technology, welcomed the government’s moves towards regulating deepfake videos, pointing to the impact they were already having on politics in other countries such as India and the US.

“There is no doubt that we will have to deal with this phenomenon. It has an impact on something that is most important to us in a democracy – namely trust and faith in other people,” she told Denmark’s public broadcaster DR.

In the current Indian election campaign, she said that deepfakes of popular Bollywood actors had been used to criticise the current government and encourage voters to vote for the opposition.

“In India and the USA we see politicians saying things they could never think of saying. We are getting an erosion of the truth,” she said. 

She said that even if the videos were clearly labelled as AI-generated, it did not necessarily make them unproblematic. 

“Even if you can see that it is a deepfake, it can still influence voters to think that there is something wrong with them [the politician] or that they look stupid,” she said. “We have a situation where another person is used as a digital hand puppet.” 

 
 

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