Iraqi Refugees Held in Denmark Begin a Hunger Strike

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH and CATHERINE CONTIGUGLIA

PARIS — When Danish police officers raided a church this week in Copenhagen to dislodge Iraqi refugees living there, they hoped to end a three-month-long stalemate.

Instead, the raid, and videos that are said to show the police beating the refugees’ supporters, have generated intensive news coverage, sparked a demonstration by thousands who demanded the Iraqis be allowed to stay in Denmark and led to a hunger strike by some of the refugees.

The trouble began Wednesday when the police arrived at the church to detain about 20 men who had been living there with permission from the church’s leader. Officials said they wanted to round up the men, who had been denied asylum, because they were not keeping in touch with the authorities who were working on their deportations.

When the men refused to leave the church, the police said they began to remove them against their will. But local activists who supported the refugees and had learned of the raid blocked the police vans in an attempt to stop the detentions.

Videos that are said to show the confrontation that followed show some activists being dragged away and one being clubbed by the police. In the end, the police arrested 19 of the refugees, all men, and, according to The Copenhagen Post, numerous protesters as well.

A woman identified as Christina Sondergaard, who was beaten by an officer with a baton , told Denmark’s TV2 on Friday that she would file a complaint against the police.

Katrine Jensen, 27, a spokeswoman for Kirkeasyl, a volunteer group supporting the Iraqis, said the police used batons and pepper spray to clear those trying to block them. She said that she was outside the church during the confrontation and that a number of the demonstrators were injured.

The raid was a joint operation by the National Police and the Copenhagen police. Flemming Steen Munch, a Copenhagen police spokesman, declined to comment on the accusations of brutality.

Justice Minister Brian Mikkelsen was quoted in the Danish news media as saying: “I think we would have preferred not to have to use force. But we happen to live in a democratic society which is built on people abiding by the country’s laws and rules — and there’s no special treatment just because you occupy a church.”

But The Copenhagen Post reported that a former prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, criticized the police action, saying, “It went beyond the bounds of common humanity and decency.” Iraqi refugees had been living at the Brorson Church since May, and the group that was there this week included about 40 women and children, who were not taken away.

The news of the raid on the church led to a peaceful demonstration on Thursday night in Copenhagen seeking asylum for all the refugees. Organizers said 20,000 people had gathered, but the police put the number at 12,000.

The arrested refugees were sent to the Sandholm immigration holding camp outside Copenhagen and nearly all have refused food since Thursday, according to Helge Norrung, a lawyer representing some of those detained. He said the Iraqis’ lives could be endangered by militants if they returned home.

An immigration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not talk about individual cases but said Denmark turned away refugees if it believed they would not be endangered by returning home.

An Iraqi delegation is scheduled to visit Denmark next week to discuss the fate of the refugees, officials and lawyers said.

Danish officials said that 300 Iraqis were granted asylum out of 562 who requested it last year.

Iraqi Immigrants Struggle to Adjust to Life in the U.S.

By KIRK SEMPLE

Not long after the Iraq war began in 2003, Uday Hattem al-Ghanimi was accosted by several men outside the American military base where he managed a convenience store. They accused him of abetting the Americans, and one fired a pistol at his head.

Now, after 24 operations, Mr. Ghanimi has a reconstructed face as well as political asylum in the United States. On July 4, his wife and three youngest children joined him in New York after a three-year separation.

But the euphoria of their reunion quickly dissipated as the family began to reckon with the colder realities of their new life. Mr. Ghanimi, 50, who has not been able to work because of lingering pain, is supporting his family on a monthly disability check of $761, food stamps and handouts from friends. They are crammed into one room they rent in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in a city whose small Iraqi population is scattered. And Mr. Ghanimi’s wife and children do not speak English, deepening their sense of isolation.

“They say, ‘Let’s go back,’ ” Mr. Ghanimi said glumly. “It’s not what they were thinking. I told them, ‘Just be patient.’ ”

For years after the American invasion of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis clamored for admission to the United States and found the door all but closed — until the government reacted to widespread criticism in 2007 by making it easier for more to enter with special visas or as refugees.

But now that Iraqis are arriving in larger numbers, many are discovering that life in the United States is much harder than they expected.

A report released in June by the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement organization in New York, said that many Iraqi immigrants have been unable to find jobs, are exhausting government and other benefits and are spiraling toward poverty and homelessness.

Advocates for immigrants in New York and elsewhere say that Iraqis have had more difficulty getting settled than most migrant populations. Many are well educated and arrive with unrealistically high expectations of the life that awaits them. Though most have received assistance from government or private agencies, large numbers have immigrated in the depths of the recession.

Many also need help dealing with the physical and emotional wounds of war.

“I’ve never seen a population where the trauma is so universal,” said Robert Carey, vice president for resettlement and migration policy at the International Rescue Committee.

More than 30,000 Iraqis have been resettled in the United States since the 2003 invasion as refugees, or with special visas for those who worked closely with the American government. At least 1,500 more have been granted asylum, federal officials say.

A vast majority have arrived in the past two years, settling thinly across the country, with larger concentrations in San Diego, Phoenix, Houston and Dearborn, Mich. More than 1,100 have been resettled in the New York region, with at least 100 in New York City.

In Iraq, many worked as doctors, teachers, scientists and interpreters — often for Americans, giving some the hope that they would be rewarded with a comfortable life here. But like accomplished immigrants from other countries, most have found that overseas credentials do not always apply in the American market, compelling them to compete for lower-skill jobs.

Nour al-Khal, 35, who arrived in New York as a refugee in 2007, has been mentoring several Iraqi families. Among the hardest adjustments, she said, is accepting the likelihood that they will not make a lateral professional move.

“We fight over that,” said Ms. Khal, who was shot in Basra, in southern Iraq, in 2005 while working as an interpreter for Steven Vincent, an American journalist who was killed in the attack. Ms. Khal was a senior manager for an American development contractor; in New York, the best job she could initially find was as a receptionist at a real estate firm.

“I just accepted it,” said Ms. Khal, who now works as a translator. “It was so hard.”

The New York region offers notable opportunities for newcomers. Public transportation is good, and social service agencies have a wealth of experience with recent immigrants. But living costs are high, and the Iraqi population — unlike other immigrant groups that have colonized neighborhoods and formed associations — is atomized, fostering an alienation that is aggravated by the city’s relentless pace.

“My life is miserable,” said Dunya al-Juboori, 29, a former hair salon owner in Baghdad who came as a refugee in 2007 and lives in Medford, N.J. She has been working for minimum wage at a salon in the mornings and attending cosmetology school the rest of the day, leaving no time or money to develop a social life. She has not seen her family since 2006, when she left Iraq to seek treatment in Jordan for advanced lymphoma.

“I cry every day,” she said, adding quickly, “Not in the morning, because I’m too busy.”

Ehab, 34, who worked for a development contractor in Baghdad but fled after receiving threats, said recent immigrants from Iraq are in need of profound guidance. (He spoke on the condition that his surname not be published, saying he feared that insurgents in Iraq would attack his family.)

“An Iraqi who is transitioning from a country in war needs a lot of care,” said Ehab, who arrived in New York as a refugee in 2007 and works as a project coordinator for Proskauer Rose, a Manhattan law firm that has helped hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers.

Mr. Ghanimi, the store manager who was shot, is deeply grateful for the free medical care, legal assistance and housing he received while his face was repaired and his family’s asylum applications were processed.

But the tasks still at hand are overwhelming, he said — like finding a new apartment, getting his wife treatment for a variety of physical and emotional ailments and enrolling his children, 21, 17 and 11, in classes.

His most important job, he said, is to convince them all that they are better off here than in Baghdad — at the very least, because their lives are not at risk.

“I told them everything here is beautiful,” he said. “Electricity 24 hours, not like in Iraq. The weather is very good, not like in Iraq. There are many things you can’t get in Iraq. And they come and say, ‘Yeah, but you can’t get it.’ ”

A few days later, he took the family to Times Square at sunset, to experience the full effect of the lights. They were wide-eyed, dazzled by the swirl of activity.

“Maybe it will take time to put everything in place,” Mr. Ghanimi said. “But I feel like everything will be good.”