How Denmark is mourning after the Copenhagen shootings
A man places a Danish flag next to flowers for the shooting victims outside the “Kruttoende” cultural centre in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 15, 2015.
Denmark is in mourning after a series of attacks this weekend, and Danes are taking to social media to show their grief. Their message sounds like one we've heard before: #JegErCharlie.
Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, 22, opened fire at a Copenhagen café on Saturday, killing a filmmaker named Finn Norgaard and injuring three police officers. Several hours later, he attacked a nearby synagogue, killing one man and injuring two officers, Al Jazeera reported.
Not very long after the attacks, many people made up their minds about why he'd done it.
The attack, it seemed, was either connected to or inspired by last month’s attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. A jihad-inspired extremist had decided to kill people over a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad.
There were compelling reasons to think so: 1) The event was a celebration of free speech titled "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression"; 2) One attendee (and perhaps the main target) slated to speak was Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who’s famous for having drawn Muhammad’s head on the body of a dog; and 3) French ambassador Francois Zimeray was there and gave introductory remarks.
Still, there are more questions than answers about why this particular attack happened, and about what these two attacks mean for Denmark and France, for Europe, for terrorism and counterterrorism, and for Europe’s immigrant and Muslim populations.
More from GlobalPost: Europe's Muslims struggle for normalcy after Paris attacks
But the parallels are proving very helpful for grieving Danes. On social media, they’re expressing solidarity with France while borrowing some of the visual and literary memes that became popular in the wake of the Paris attack. They're using the now iconic hashtag #JeSuisCharlie and new hashtags that riff on it: #JeSuisDanois #JegErCharlie, #JegErDansk, and more.
It's a vocabulary of mourning that Danes could tap into immediately and that places their own national tragedy into a larger, ongoing phenomenon. Here are three of the ways they're going about it.
1) They're are showing solidarity with France and appreciation for French support.
2) They're celebrating Charlie Hebdo, borrowing and adapting imagery, and using variations on #JeSuisCharlie.
3) And they are emphasizing freedom of speech and using many of the memes that also circulated after Charlie Hebdo — pencils, for example.
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