It didn’t seem to be big news for the world media, but Copenhagen has had rioting all over the city, including in my neighborhood. At the time, my brother Diego was visiting. We had no idea that rioting had been breaking out all over the city for twelve hours at this point, but at about 9:00 pm he came into the apartment and told me about a fire across the canal.
Bonfires and even explosions are pretty common in Christianshavn. So much so that usually, if you ask someone, “What was that?” after an explosion, They’ll say, “What?” So I didn’t take it seriously. But then he told me that the flames were twenty feet high. I grabbed my camera.
It turned out to be van that had been turned on its side, surrounded by rubbish, and set ablaze. And, as you can see in the picture, there was another car on fire on the next block. Where we were standing, people were milling around and watching, but were relaxed and laughing, so I didn’t think there was any real danger. But near the car in the distance you could see guys throwing bricks and small bombs at the police riot vans that would occasionally circle.
The heat coming from the burning car was impressive, but the amazing thing was that those little bombs were going off everywhere, occasionally pretty close to where we were. I don’t know how big these bombs are, or what they’re made of, but they are very pretty powerful. After just a minute or two of watching and taking pictures, a really loud one went off, and we decided to get back to the apartment. My ears hurt for hours afterwards.
As for the reason for the riots, it’s because of a “youth house” that was raided by police because the legal owners wanted the squatters that had been living there since the 80′s to be evicted. The Danes may agree about more things that Americans do, but opinions run strong here as to whether the raid was the right thing to do.
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