Couple sail migrant to Sweden

(12 Sep 2015) With good winds in their tail, sailing from Copenhagen to Sweden takes Calle Vangstrup and Annika Holm Nielsen just over two hours.
People living here think little of crossing the border, but for asylum seekers looking to reach Sweden, it's a last passage on their long and perilous journey across Europe.
As Danish police temporarily sought to block hundreds of asylum seekers from trying to pass through the country to Sweden this week, the two students started ferrying refugees across to Malmo on small sailboats.
They believed it was the safest way to avoid being stopped by police and forced to register their asylum claims in Denmark, which Holm Nielsen said was a "very similar" society, but "completely different" in terms of its stance towards refugees and migrants.
Almost 15,000 people applied for asylum in Denmark last year, while neighbouring Sweden, whose population is nearly twice as large, took in more than 80,000.
On Monday, the two students offered to help their first Syrian refugee make the crossing after seeing him at the Copenhagen train station.
Annika and Calle said they were shocked at how exhausted he looked and offered their help by showing him a sign written in Arabic reading "Welcome. Do you want to go to Sweden?"
The students insist on preserving the anonymity of their passenger as well as the name of the boat on which they made the trip.
During the crossing, he was too nervous to eat or sleep despite his extreme exhaustion, explaining his legs were hurting from walking and previous beatings.
It was only upon arriving in Swedish water and within close reach of the coastline that he began to relax.
As they docked, he was met by friends of the students who volunteered to help him get in touch with the Swedish authorities.
Vangstrup and Holm Nielsen are part of a growing number of people in Denmark who have been helping refugees make it across the border by car, train or boat.
But this assistance isn't without risk.
Swedish police said they have detained fourteen people accused of smuggling migrants across a bridge between Denmark and Sweden.
Police spokesman Lars Forstell on Tuesday said those detained were suspected of illegally transporting migrants across the Oresund Bridge from Copenhagen, Denmark, to Malmo, Sweden.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the suspects were part of organised smuggling networks or individuals who wanted to help migrants go to Sweden for humanitarian reasons.
This was not the first time Danes helped people in need of asylum.
During the Second World War, fleets of small boats helped more than 7,000 Jews make the same journey, fleeing their impending arrest by German authorities.
As the boat arrived to refuel, Annika's phone started to ring with friends telling her they met another group of people who needed to reach Sweden.
That night, Annika and her friends said they helped fourteen people make the crossing.
On 10 September, Denmark's police chief Jens Henrik Hoejbjerg announced the country would permit all asylum seekers to reach Sweden unimpeded, saying there was "no other option than to let them go" as they could not "detain foreigners who do not want to seek asylum here."

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