Networks of informants – including taxi drivers, public sector employees and telecom company workers – are being used to track down women who have run away from their husband or family members in so-called honour-related conflicts, Information reports.
The newspaper reports that crisis centres have been moved to specifically requesting ethnic Danes to transport honour violence victims.
“Normally of course we don’t make an issue of ethnicity, but when it comes to transporting exactly these women, our members make an exception,” Trine Wollenberg, the head of the industry organisation Dansk Taxi Råd, told Information.
The alternative to physically tracking the women is to obtain their address from the CPR register. Hakima Lakhrissi, the head of the facility for immigrant women Vestegnen Indvandrer Kvindecentret, said that this practice was also widespread.
“Many are tracked down because the family has contacts in the public sector,” she said. “And these contacts can easily find out where a woman is staying if they just know her CPR number.”
Law proposal
In response, the government has made a law proposal that would enable address details of women who have fled their home to be removed from the CPR register so that only a few employees at municipalities would have access to the information.
While interest groups see the government’s proposal as a step in the right direction, it has also attracted criticism, particularly because it tasks municipalities with the task of enacting the protection measures, instead of it being done at state level.
The proposal will be presented in parliament on May 1.
