Police in Iceland have said they are taking a recent case of racial abuse, a video of which was posted on Facebook yesterday, very seriously. The incident occurred at the Smáralind shopping mall in Kópavogur, a town in the Greater Reykjavík Area.
Archive photo by Páll Stefánsson.
The incident involved a man yelling at a group of Icelandic teenagers which he presumed to be of Asian origin, asking if they spoke Icelandic. The man goes on to accuse them of having brought swine flu to Iceland and of being racist, visir.is reports.
Police say they are searching for the man and will “make him answer for it,” specifically referring to the “degrading language” used.
Speaking to Stöð 2, Hajar Anbari, the girl who filmed the incident, said that they had received a lot of support from the public in recent days.
“This [the incident caught on film] shows the prejudice we ‘foreigners’ face despite most of us having Icelandic citizenship; I was born here and [my friend] Cassandra was born here. There is no difference between us, we speak Icelandic.”
ZR
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