Copenhagen hippie haven belongs to Denmark: court
google.com | Feb 18th 2011
COPENHAGEN — Denmark's supreme court on Friday ruled that Copenhagen's "free
city" of Christiania, long a refuge for hippies and artists, belongs to the
state and cannot be freely used by the squatters.
"The state-accorded usage rights of Christiania are not unlimited," the court
said, upholding and finalising an appeals court ruling in 2009.
The Supreme Court did not however order the squatters who have occupied the
enclave since 1971 to leave, but said they must return to the negotiating table.
The court also said the residents should accept a "normalisation" of
Christiania's status, ordered by the government in 2004.
Christiania was founded on September 26, 1971 when a band of guitar-laden
hippies made an abandoned army barracks in central Copenhagen their home. They
raised their "freedom flag" and named their new abode "Christiania, free city".
Its existence has been threatened since the arrival in power in 2001 of the
Danish centre-right government, and it has been the scene of regular police
raids and violent clashes, and even bloody settings of scores between drug
dealers.
In March 2004 police officially dismantled the hash market on Pusher Street,
the site's most famed thoroughfare, estimating the soft drug market controlled
by criminal biker gangs at one billion kroner (134 million euros, 183 million
dollars) a year.
The same year, the Danish state terminated the enclave's user rights after
residents refused to "normalise" Christiania and open it up to outsiders.
That decision infuriated Christiania residents and led to a legal challenge in
2006 that was finally rejected by the court Friday.
"The government's decision to dismantle it in 2004 was legal (and) does not run
counter to the European Convention on Human Rights," the court said, rejecting
the claim made by the plaintiffs.
Christiania today is one of Europe's last remaining hippi enclaves, counting
around 1,000 hippies, artists, activists and misfits as residents.
There are restaurants, cafes, shops and some psychedelic-looking homes designed
by residents and the area attracts more than a million visitors annually.
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