Nine Days of Danish Riots; New Excuse Offered

The latest excuse to the ongoing rioting that has resulted in schools across Denmark torched, along with hundreds of cars, is that the riots occurred to protest police harassment.

A group of youths who have been torching cars and waste containers in the Danish capital said Tuesday the wave of unrest started as a protest against police harassment.

In a letter published in Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, the youths accused police of "brutal, racist" behavior.

It was the first time that rioting juveniles had offered any explanation for the fires that have raged for nine consecutive nights mostly in immigrant neighborhoods across the country. The authors of the letter said they would now stop rioting.

"Basically the unrest is about the way we are treated by the police, who are brutal, racist and totally unacceptably insulting," the group said in the letter.

The authors called themselves "Boys of inner Noerrebro," referring to the immigrant neighborhood in Copenhagen where the unrest started on Feb. 10.

Police said 21 fires were set overnight Tuesday for a total of about 600 since the wave of arson started. The youths have burned cars, trash containers and schools. In some cases, they have pelted firefighters with rocks, but no serious injuries have been reported.

Did no one try nonviolent demonstrations such as protesting in papers or marching through the streets, rather than starting directly with rioting and carnage?

Expect this to be an excuse proffered by those who are rioting in France as the French government cracks down and arrests dozens over the weekend for involvement in the nightly rioting that occurs in the Paris suburbs.

These thugs are justifying the inexcusable rioting and destruction of public and private property because they claim that the police are racist or engage in harassment.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians summoned the Danish ambassador to give him a talking to over the cartoon republication. Egypt also banned issues of four papers from distribution in Egypt, including the Wall Street Journal:

The Egyptian government has summoned the ambassador of Denmark in Cairo to protest the reprinting of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Information Ministry also said it has banned issues of four Western newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and Britain's The Observer, because they contained the reprints, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported.

Protests and riots erupted in many Muslim countries in 2006 when the cartoons, one showing the Prophet wearing a turban resembling a bomb, first appeared in a Danish daily. At least 50 people were killed and three Danish embassies attacked.

"The insistence of the Danish media to insult Islam again is unfortunate since the incident of publishing the cartoons has undoubtedly confirmed that such shameful acts only lead to more tension," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The insistence to complain bitterly about the publication of cartoons while remaining silent over the assassination plot to murder one of the cartoonists, is quite telling. Thousands of Egyptian students demonstrated and called for a boycott of Danish goods. You can't tell me that this is some spontaneous action - there is coordination going on here that smacks of Islamist intent.