Denmark is probably one of the last countries that you would associate war and conflict with. However, this is no longer the case as researchers have unearthed files that link the country to a series of wars.
The investigation is being led by a historian as well as a political scientist who will look at the decision by the Danish government to send their country's soldiers to war in the mentioned countries. The documents will contain the controversial treatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners by the Danish solders and look at the reasons why Denmark went to war. They aim to ultimately uncover some harsh truths about the wars the country was involved in.
Denmark's opposition party, The Liberal Alliance, demanded that once the documents are ready they should be made publicly available. However, the government and the Justice Minister, Soren Pind, have fought fiercely against their release to the public, with their request being upheld.
"We believe it would be best for full public access to all 70,000 documents plus the historical account. [However] we cannot get this through," Mette Bock said in a recent interview.
The documents also show that the foreign prisoners of war, that Denmark had, was far greater than the parliament was told. Denmark also did not look after the prisoners that were handed over to the Iraqi authorities and they were also not registered correctly.
On #Phoenix wall, man writes by memory the names of 2,300 killed in Afghanistan war https://t.co/UTRTgdWOEf pic.twitter.com/i3Z1npVckT
— azcentral (@azcentral) May 26, 2016
Also further investigations revealed that the Danish soldiers went against government orders and continued to hand over detainees to the Iraqis, putting them at risk of receiving the death penalty.
"There are really a lot of things you can dig into […] it is naive to believe that there will be no wrong decisions taken when you go to war. Decisions in a war will not be taken in a fully informed and rational basis," Mette Bock said in a recent interview.
