Danish nightclubs impose 'language controls' to prevent sexual harassment

Nightclubs in Denmark are refusing entry to people who cannot speak Danish, English or German, amid fears that they will sexually harass female guests.

A recent spate of sexual assaults against women around Europe, reportedly carried out by asylum seekers, has prompted nightclubs in at least three Danish cities –Thisted, Sonderborg and Haderslev- to tighten their entry rules.

The policy denies entry to guests who are unable to communicate with the staff, according to the Local Denmark.

They have been condemned by the Danish branch of Amnesty International, which said that the nightclubs were discriminating against migrants.

“A large number of the male guests who come from the local asylum centre have a very hard time respecting the opposite sex,” an employee at Den Flyvende Hollænder, a Sonderborg nightclub, told TV Syd. “In my eyes, it is harassment when one or more men continue to touch a young woman after she has said ‘stop’.”

A town official in Thisted, who overseas a nearby camp containing over 300 asylum seeker, recently claimed that young Danish women “feel unsafe on the streets because they have already been accosted by asylum seekers”.