Camp in Jutland (1)
[0:03:24]
I wake up, I look at my phone, I try not to have contact with anybody, try not to go out of my room
I’m afraid to make contact with people, but now there are many people that are smoking, drinking, taking drugs
Heroine, coke, hash, pills
I don’t eat in the cantine, I go and get a bag of food, and I eat in my room
When I came in 2016, there was not this kind of environment here
Before it was probably eighty percent of people who had no criminal record or who did not do drugs, but now it’s the opposite [translator: but he cannot answer why that is].
I don’t maintain my health, because I am already more mentally sick, now, because of being here, I’m afraid to go out of my room
[00:08:59]
The prison was converted to a detention center in 2016. Before, it had been an open prison with minimal security. Prisoners could come and go. Now, it is a deportation center for rejected asylum seekers and exiled refugees. Danish parliament made the change following the Syrian refugee crisis in 2014. In 2016, they reopened the estate, called it an Udrejsecentre, an expulsion center, and changed the infrastructure. They added housing. They built tall, gray dormitories that look like cubes sketched against the plain blue sky. They removed the kitchens from the pre-existent single-story buildings, which are still there, red, and wooden, and small. They installed turnstiles at the entrance. They erected fences around the camp.
Past the fences, there are trees. Covering the sky, the pines form a pattern of darks and lights. The sun seeps through, leading the pinstripes, triangularly, to converge into a bright point. Beyond the pines are sprawling fields of grass or snow, depending on the time of year. In springtime, which was when I was there, atop the wheatgrass, there are cows, munching, and between the blades of grass, the wind whistles, for it is a constant, westerly wind which powers Denmark.
[00:10:17]
I think that the clinic and red cross, the doctors and the nurses, they are not actually helping us, they are actually creating more problems for us,
In 2017, my first issue was I had a lot of pain in my teeth, I went to the clinic and I said I cannot eat I cannot sleep because I had so much pain in my teeth, and the nurse told me to go and drink some water
And this nurse actually went and wrote down in my files that I was creating a problem that didn’t exist, recently I was talking to the psychologist in the center, and she said she will try to remove this from my file
[00:11:57]
The name of the center Kærshovedgård is a difficult word to pronounce for a native English speaker, such as myself. Whenever I was asked, What are you doing in Denmark? I answered, I am writing a piece on Castle-goh. That is my mock-pronunciation. Most often, I was met with a blank stare. Danish listeners do not enjoy parsing through my United States, West Coast inflections. The first syllable usually comes out correct, because my vowels enjoy turning flat and ugly: castle, apple, ae. But as the word continues, the rounded, back-end vowels are lost. I cannot hold a phoneme inside the soft palette and shift it, as is often required in Danish whenever a ‘d’ or a ‘g’ abut the vowel and sit in the middle and or at the end of a word. Most often, the response I received was, what, and I’d say it again, Castle-goht. I would try a few times until an attempt landed closer to the actual name, and I could see by a nod or a frown that my words were met with recognition.
Kærshovedgård: Ka like a as in apple sh uh hold it in the throat uhl half swallow ga don’t pronounce the d glottal catch
[00:13:19]
One time I had an appointment in the clinic and I waited one hour, and next time I had an appointment in the clinic, I had pain in my eye, and I was told just wait, the nurse will see you, but she didn’t come, and I left, because I couldn’t wait any longer, I was afraid again that she would make some kind of report on me, so I left, and then they went in and changed my diet, because I was losing weight, and I am still losing weight, and I had a protein drink they were giving me, but now they stopped giving it to me, and now I’m just getting yogurt, so they are not helping, no matter if you come with a huge issue, they don’t help you, but we have a psychologist, and I speak with her, and I think she’s nice, and there are two different doctors connected to the clinic,
I’m experiencing that one doctor she is nice and she wanted to help me and wanted to prescribe medicine, but when I went to the clinic, the nurse did not want to give me the medicine, so I am sensing that the nurses are against us,
Even the guard is more helpful and went with me to the clinic to sort out this issue with the medicine [translator: meaning the guards are helping more in the clinic than the nurses in the clinic]
I try not to involve myself with the clinic or the staff because I don’t want to cause any problems
[00:18:40]
I had come to Denmark to do literary translation. In an experimental exchange program, my friend Patricio and I spent a week in Copenhagen with two Danish writers.
Patricio is a poet from Mexico City. He writes in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. He and I were to translate the two Danes. One was an aspiring novelist, the other a poet. Neither Patricio nor I spoke Danish. To translate them, we would word-by-word exchange Danish for English, using dictionaries, and after, to edit, we’d badger them with questions about tone and latent meaning. Even though they spoke English fluently, they too asked us uncomfortable questions: Why’d you write the sentence in this order instead of that order? Why do you keep inverting these sentences? It would sound a bit archaic in Danish. Do you sound archaic in English?
She does a little bit, Patricio said. I snapped my head and scowled. I was not aiming for archaic. I was going for absurd. All I did was shift some clauses, the order of attention. I was trying to cant the sentence, like a lever, because the perspective was a close-third to Paul Gauguin whittling a bust of the devil/himself, so why would I write that straight?
But it would translate well into Spanish, Patricio added. He was trying to appease me.
[00:20:11]
When I came to the center, I had to do my reports three times a week, meldepligt three times a week, now it’s every day, but in 2018 the police came to my room and took me at five in the morning, five policemen came, took me to Ellebæk prison,
They took me to Ellebæk because they wanted to try and persuade me to go back to Iran
We went to the embassy but in the embassy they said we cannot send this person back
Six months in Ellebæk prison
Then after six months in Ellebæk, they took me back to the camp, and later, I received a letter that said that seventeen times you did not make your meldepligt
Because I had been in prison for those six months, I could not verify any of these days that they accused me for not doing my meldepligt, I lost all my papers when I went to prison
They took me to court because of this, and the judge sentenced me to fourteen days prison, but on top of that, they expelled me for six years,
But I was not aware that I had been expelled for six years, because they didn’t say it in court, but I found out later when I went to the return agency meeting, and she said that it says from the court papers, that I have been expelled for six years,
so here they are playing with us
[00:25:38]
I arrived in Denmark a day early. I was to begin the writing program the next morning at Forfatterskolen, Scandinavia’s infamous writing academy. I checked myself into a hostel, rested for an hour inside of my cube, and biked to the palace.
The hostel was in Vesterbro, a neighborhood with many restaurants, bars, and thrift stores that sandwich Vesterbro road. Vesterbrogade is one long street which ends in a forest-park that has a zoo. The zoo has rhinos, I later pointed out to Patricio. Rhino would be a good name for a story, we agreed, talking our nonsense. I walked along Vesterbrogade, surveying possible dinner options. There were shawarma restaurants, a Thai spot. I turned a few corners. I took note of a coffee shop. I found an available e-bike.
The palace was a ten-minute bike ride away. I passed a hot pink theater that had blue and white molding. It was out of place, tacky and caught my attention against the rest of the city’s muted palette of beiges and creams. Some areas are more metallic, slate grey, and some have the infamous primaries, but that’s not everywhere. The streets of Copenhagen to me smell of sweet bread.
I could not find the entrance to the palace, or I could not find which entrance was designated for this event hosted by SOS Racisme. I circled the squares segments of stone looking for signs. I entered one entrance that was populated with tourists and statues until a docent told me I was in the wrong square. I went back outside. It was May, so the cold was mild. Beneath a staircase, I found an open door. A security guard was checking bags. She told me to walk through the scanner. I asked if this was the entrance for the SOS Racisme event, and a woman behind me interrupted that she was one of the organizers. They told me to remove my jacket. They checked our bags, and we walked through the metal detectors and hurried, her heels clopping along the stone in small echoes. She promised to find me a translator. The entire event would be held in Danish. Paintings of governmental figures and snack tables with coffee, lemon cake, and fruit adorned the halls until we reached the destination, Common Hall, a spacious room filled with the event’s attendees, chandeliers, wooden chairs, murals, and a stage with a microphone.
[00:26:53]
What I don’t understand is that they gave me expulsion, 2018, I don’t understand this procedure, so why are they doing this to me, and now they say, okay, you can re-open your case again, but why did they expel me
My lawyer has applied to reopen, and after my application has been sent they have closed down all Iranian cases [giggles]
I heard from the news
I did not hear from my lawyer, and I did not get any letter about this, but I was hearing it from volunteers and other people in the camp
I don’t remember exactly, but I can say it wasn’t in January, because [translator: because I was talking to him about this in January, and they put a new day to discuss the situation in Iran, and again they decided to close down all cases, but now there is no new meeting to discuss the situation]
[00:30:21]
There was a member of Danish Parliament who spoke.
When I look at these transcripts, it is as though I am staring into a barrel. I am unable to see much of anything, aside from the outline of its bore. Chilled by form, emptied of substantive claims, I check the time.
It is 2 p.m. These transcripts are printed and laid out on my bed, and I am cross referencing my notes from the itinerary, hunting for the words of the parliament member.
13.00-13.05: Opening by Zenia Stampe, MF for the Radical Left
MF: She is a Member of the Folketing: The Danish Parliament, which has 179 members who represent Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. There are ten parties in the Folketing. Hers is The Social Liberal Party. The translator mumbled softly into my ear as I typed:
moral grey zone in the detention centers, very few politicians who care about this issue. when you hear about the conditions they live under its hard to recognize your own society. in no way like Guantanamo, but you get a feeling that this is not Denmark, this is something different. judicial and moral no mans land, very few parties who care about the conditions in the deportation centers. welcome and thank you. the fewer you are the more important it is that you are here.
[00:32:08]
When I came to the camp, I was rejected, and after eighteen months, I was talking to the Danish Refugee Council, and they looked at my case and said you have a good possibility of reopening, and we will help you with this, and right after the meeting, that’s when the police came and took me
When I was in Ellebæk prison, I was introduced to a lawyer that everyone was recommending me, saying that if I converted to Christianity, this lawyer could help me
When I came to seek asylum it was for political issues but this lawyer was saying, we could say it is for a religious issue if you convert to Christianity
What happens now is that I agree, so that this lawyer helps me re-open my case, but for some unknown reason, the Danish Refugee Council does not forward my papers to this lawyer, so ten months is passing, and I’m seeing my other Iranian friends are getting their papers, are getting their cases re-opened, but me, nothing happens, and it turns out that the lawyer forgot to send my case to the Refugee Appeals Board,
So I was shocked,
So again, my Danish friends, trying to help me, talk talk talk talk talk, and again I wait another eighteen months to open again,
In these eighteen months that my Danish friends were trying to help me, I met the lawyer three times, but every time the lawyer was stressed, there was a communication issue, so we went to the Refugee Appeals Board [makes ululating oh noise]
But I felt that the lawyer did not have a good communication with me, he did not represent me very well in the appeals board
So the Appeals Board rejected again my case,
And now it’s 2021, they return me again, to the camp,
[00:36:50]
I typed quickly, taking note as someone on stage gave this statistic about the center:
Suicide rate is twenty-eight times higher than the rest of Denmark.
There was a pause, a shifting in the room. The residents gathered. The speaker explained why:
Now we continue, the residents have to go now.
The camp residents had spoken on the stage. In small speeches, they depicted their lives and the confines they live in. While they are permitted to leave the camp, they must return in time for their daily check-ins, called meldepligt. Some residents have multiple check-ins per day, making it unfeasible to leave the camp, which is located seven kilometers away from public transportation. The residents are not allowed to have cars or e-bikes. Those who came to the event had to finish their speeches quickly, before being driven back. The rest of the event was constituted of a panel of politicians, activists, and lawyers:
The panel will talk about immigration policy starting with someone from the social liberal party.
First of all, I think that the residents cannot recognize the country with these conditions, and I thought, where are the journalists who are supposed to write about this? Some journalists are about getting clicks on social media, and media writes about the bad stories of Kærshovedgård, the conditions made for the people who live there. I do not know what the majority of the country wants, but the tone on social media is harsh; it seems that many people think that foreigners do not have human rights
One resident from Iran presented a slide show of pictures and a video of his daughter.
the eight years of my life I cannot get back, many things I wished for but couldn’t do because of the system in Kærshovedgård. My childhood memories got burned away, I cannot get them back. (Picture: a room with a mattress and a flag).In 2017, we came to Kærshovedgård and did a starvation strike. We didn’t eat for twenty days. We didn’t get any help. Seventy-four people were executed in Iran in February. Maybe more than one thousand last year, where I’m from, so I can’t go back there.
My translator continued to catch me up, during technical difficulties. A video wouldn’t play.
His kid has been taken away from him, he can’t be with his wife, his kid has been taken away.
The video started to work.
I came from a dictatorship because my life was in danger and I have never done any crime, I have many Danish friends, I have never caused any trouble in society, I learned Danish myself, I didn’t go to a language school. Here’s a picture of my daughter. (Little girl with a cake with a million sprinkles, head titled sassy with sunglasses).
[00:37:06]
So when they rejected me in the appeals board, I was completely shocked, and I could not imagine having to come back to the camp, so I did not go back,
So, one activist who is in Copenhagen and who knows the asylum system and also knows my case, she said, you are welcome to stay in my house, so for two months I stayed in her house, and I also got my own place and a job, with her help,
So I missed going to church, so I started going to church as well, but the people in this church, they started having a lot of questions for me
I wanted to be, I didn’t want to answer questions about my living, my working without permission, living without papers, so I wanted to find a church where nobody was asking personal questions
So now I found myself in a situation where I had a job and I had a place to stay and I also had a church to go to but I had no life, so I decided I needed my papers, and I went voluntarily, sorry wait, sorry wait [translator: he says sorry wait]
My Danish friend tried to contact again the lawyer,
And we told the lawyer, now I have found a job, I also have a place to stay, I have a life, I have friends, I have church,
And the lawyer says, okay, let’s try again to reopen your case within three months
So I think, it’s three months that I have to wait, so I don’t want to work illegally, I want to stay with friends, and wait for the lawyer to reopen my case, so I waited seven months, and again the lawyer sends me a message saying he forgot again to send my application to reopen my case,
I went to talk to the asylum center, and they gave me a place to stay, they gave me pocket money in the asylum center, as they would do when your case is reopened, but my case was not reopened, and then I got a phone call from the return agency, and they said your case is not open,
This women from the return agency asked me questions, are you ill, are you on any medication, are you mentally ill, and I answered no to all the questions, and so she said, okay, then you are capable of going to Kærshovedgård, instead of the asylum center
I did not have a chance to talk again with the appeals board or any judge to look at my case again, I was sent to Kærshovedgård again, one more time, and now I’m here waiting
[00:45:33]
During a coffee break, another English-speaker found me and my translator. She asked if she could sit with us, to hear the translation. She and I scooted our frail wooden chairs, squeezing in the young man who clearly felt uncomfortable talking at the same time as the speakers on stage. He continued his whisper. She and I took turns putting our ears up to his mouth. She was also from the United States.
we don’t have refrigerators, we don’t have televisions, they have taken everything from us, and they put us far away in the countryside, you can’t go to the train stations because there’s eight kilometers, there’s no transport, unless you ride a bike, but most people there don’t own one, don’t know how, the electric bikes are taken away from us, we can’t have any means of transportation, is this really a democracy, why are we treated like this? My last picture. This is what I wished for, for everything in life to be as beautiful as this picture. (Grass hill and water with light of the sun falling onto it).
We stared at the screensaver.
[00:49:53]
[translator: when you are phase three, Denmark can actually deport you, you are in position to be deported, the people here in Kærshovedgård who are in phase three, some of them are in position to be deported, but others are not in position to be deported, because of the conventions, we are not allowed to send people back to countries where they can be executed or imprisoned […] He is in the phase three, where if they could find any documents and if Iran said, yes we will accept him, then they can actually deport him, but Iran does not cooperate with Denmark right now]
When I went to the embassy, there were three people I had to talk to, and I said to them, can you guarantee me that if you send me back to Iran that nothing with happen to me, and they said no we cannot guarantee, and the police were there and they were also listening to this conversation, and the embassy said no, we cannot send you because you will not be safe if we send you back
When I was living in Iran, I was politically active, I was against the regime, and I had a fight with the police and they went to search my house, and they found in my house illegal documents, they also found weapons, so if I go back, I will be arrested,
For a period of time I was living undercover to avoid the police, but they went to my wife and they arrested her, they took her to the police station several times, so my wife and I decided to get a divorce to protect her,
and I left Iran
And she also made a document that removed my son from me, because
to protect my son also
First Turkey, then Greece, then with a bus to Hungary,
So problems at the Hungarian border, so we went to Croatia,
I forgot the journey but we walked also,
From Croatia to Austria,
And then from Austria to Germany by train, but we also walked
And at that time there were also a lot of Syrian refugees, so I did not say I was from Iran, I said I was from Syria, and I speak Arabic,
Along the way, I met people who helped for free, and sometimes we had to pay,
And one of the people who were trying to help all those refugees coming at the same time, they said, where do you want to go, if you take this train, you will go to Denmark [laughing] so I took the train to Denmark
Serbia and Macedonia I remember also, passing through
I remember the journey very tiresome sleeping in the streets. in the forest
I went to Sanholm, the asylum center that receives refugees,
I’m coming here to seek asylum, here’s my identification paper,
The immigration were very very busy at that time, because there were a lot of Syrians who also needed their cases looked upon, and they rejected my case as an asylum seeker,
and after that they sent me to Kærshovedgård,
and I wait and wait and wait
[01:04:14]
During another coffee break, the other U.S. American asked me where I was from. I said Arizona and California, but I live in New York right now. She said she was from New York state but had been living in California, before starting her program in Denmark. She was studying journalism in Aarhus. That was how she became involved with Kærshovedgård, which is an hour inland from the port city.
She smiled wide and spoke fast. She was working on a documentary project about one resident, she explained. We agreed to exchange numbers. I opened WhatsApp. I had a text from Patricio asking if I was alive. Barely, I responded. I hadn’t slept on the plane. I was eager to crawl back into my hostel-pod. As she put in her number, she said, We go all the time.
To the camp?
Yes! to Kærshovedgård. Our next trip is not this Saturday but the next one. How long are you here for?
I couldn’t help but notice, between her creasing cheeks, the size of her teeth, and that they were the color of cheese. She offered to take me on their next trip. Momentarily, I ignored my noticing and smiled back, wide.
[01:04:56]
When I came to the camp, it was just reopened, and some of the buildings that are here now were not even built at the time
When I came, there were just the red buildings, the old buildings, and they were building the big white buildings
[01:06:06]
Helene Brydensholt (MF 2022-2026; The Alternative Party):
It’s a follow up of the Germans, it’s a competition to see who can be the biggest hardliner, and the rhetorics about Kærshovedgård is something debated about like the wolves, the wolves are going around freely, (look into the wolf thing) but there’s some journalists who have views of this issue but they are taught that people aren’t interested in it anymore so the solution of getting a better debate about it is people talking person to person
Martin Lemberg-Pedersen (Associate professor, PhD, Malmö University):
I don’t think anyone in here is disagreeing, that there is some strength in thinking together. If you can in your comments talk about alternatives to deportations.
Helene Brydensholt:
People are getting more and more insecure, and our Prime Minister [Mette Fredriksen] is appealing to people’s fear at the global issue, that is also parallel to the situation here, because there are asylum seekers who are criminals, and then there are ones who are not criminals
The criminality and the criminalization of the residents occupies a large portion of the Danish migration agora. At the end of the conference, one of the prior residents, a tall man in a suit, stood up and added:
There are only three people there who were convicted for rape.
Out of some 220.
[01:07:13]
When I arrived, we had two different biometric cards, we had one to go out from the camp, and we had one that was the key for the door to our rooms, [interrupts translator; translator: sorry, okay, wait, now, I explain]
Now, we have two different cards, we have one card to go out from the camp, and we have one key to open our doors, but at the time when I came to Kærshovedgård there was just one key, and this was causing a lot of problems, sometimes we could not open our doors, the system was not functioning very well, so sometimes we had to wait for a guard to come and unlock our room door,
[01:08:11]
In 2012, the first wolf in 200 years appeared in Denmark. There are now roughly seventy wild wolves living in their forests. Some citizens expressed concern to media outlets. One article on tv2nord surmises the issue: “As it stands now, none of the wolves in North Jutland live close to populated areas, but according to Peter Sunde, a professor at the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University, this may well become the case […] among the residents of Skørping, there are divided opinions about whether the wolf is welcome or not.”
[01:08:40]
They implemented two keys, because if the door could not unlock with the old key, then some of the people who are crazy, they will just kick in the door, so now they have a new key system, so we have two different keys, so sometimes, the system improves because people are crazy
[01:09:17]
While the panel discussion was lacking in tentative solutions for closing the camps, it was refreshing to see such a clear goal post set: Close the camps.
As I was leaving, the journalist who would be my ride to Kærshovedgård told me about her documentary. She explained that it focuses on a single resident, because, at the very least, maybe the project could get his case re-opened. You’re not trying to raise awareness for broader purposes? I asked. No, she said, because we’re not Danish. She paused, dropping her smile. You can’t critique a country that’s not yours.
[01:10:49]
I have not spoken with any journalists or any activists about my situation here, and I do not believe that the Danish people in general know what’s going on
The problem is I have my fingerprint here, and if I try to leave and they catch me, I will be sent back here,
The life here is so difficult and has put me in a very difficult situation, so the thought of going through all the trouble and the problems again is tiresome for me to think about
[06/08/2026]
#1 of Camp in Jutland Column: “The Sun No Longer Rises,” by Sophia Acuña ©
