COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Kurds waving giant Kurdish flags turned out at a Copenhagen memorial on Monday night, where tens of thousands of Danes rallied to honor those killed by a suspected Islamist terrorist.
The Social Democrat Lars Aslan Rasmussen, who has a Kurdish father and Danish mother, was at the rally, together with the Danish crown prince, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, most Danish politicians and the leaders of other Scandinavian countries.
"We have now experienced the fear that terrorism seeks to spread," the prime minister said, as she called for national unity. “We know that there are fanatics who hold others’ right to live in contempt.”
The remembrance took place near the cafe where one person was killed Saturday in a hail of gunfire by a 22-year-old gunman, identified as Omar el-Hussein, a Dane of Palestinian descent. Hours later, he was killed in a shootout by police at a synagogue, after fatally shooting a volunteer guard.
Flags were at half-mast on all Danish public buildings on Monday and at the memorial Kurds – who number some 30,000 in Denmark – were out in large numbers, waving giant Kurdish flags.
Kurds in Denmark have condemned the killings, noting that the same extremist ideology that has been waging war in the Kurdistan Region and the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobane – in the name of the Islamic State (ISIS) -- is now spreading terror across Europe.
Kurds also showed their presence at the memorial with a musical performance: Fuat Talay, a former saz player for the well-known Kurdish singer Sivan Perwe, performed a Kurdish song.
Many Kurdish organizations and parties with roots in Turkey, Iraq and Iran also were present.
Adnan Axacan, head of SKFD, the Confederation of Kurdish Associations in Denmark, laid a wreath at the synagogue where the gunman killed the civilian guard.
Axacan told Rudaw that the same “jihadi enemy that we Kurds have been fighting in Iraqi Kurdistan and Kobane” was behind the Copenhagen killings.
“Though the enemy has different name it's the same ideology,” he said.
In autumn last year, Kurds clashed with ISIS sympathizers in several parts of Europe, including the German cities of Herford and Celle, leaving several Kurds wounded.
Axacan said he feared that ISIS sympathizers and other extremist groups would again attack Kurds in Denmark and Europe.
“The threat is imminent everywhere in Europe," he said. "We are a target, since we are fighting against them in Syria and Iraq.”
To symbolize the friendly relations between Muslims and Jews in Denmark Ozlem Cekic, a Muslim and Kurdish MP in the country’s parliament, stood hand-in-hand with former chief Rabbi Bent Melchior.
“We can’t fight hatred with hatred,” Cekic said. “Words and dialogue create peace, so we must insist on love and relationships. For our democratic community is far stronger than the fear of terror.”
Salih Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, sent condolences to the Danish people through Nikolaj Villumsen, a Danish MP and member of the European Council.
"I express my solidarity with Denmark. We have a common struggle against extremism, whether it is in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) or in Europe,” Muslim said in the message read by Villumsen.
The MP said the message demonstrated that the struggle against extremism is not a conflict between Islam and the West.
"Rather, it is a conflict between democracy and extremism," he told Rudaw. He called it "a conflict between us -- Danes, Kurds, etc. -- who want diversity and peace, and those who want division and fear."
Social consultant Ahmet Demir, a Kurd from Turkey who knew Dan Uzan, the Jewish volunteer guard who was gunned down outside the synagogue, said he was shocked when he heard about the killing.
"I couldn’t believe it. Uzan was a very good person. He was open to all and was not thinking about whether you were Muslim, Christian or Jew. First of all, he regarded all as human beings."
Hussein, the gunman, was a Danish national linked to violent gangs. He was released from jail only two weeks before, after doing time for aggravated assault.
The Copenhagen attack came about a month after radical Islamists attacked and killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, the Paris magazine that had published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in several of its issues.
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats for drawings of the Prophet Mohammad, and French ambassador Francois Zimeray, who likened the Copenhagen attacks to the Paris assault, were at Saturday’s tragic event, but neither was hurt.
