Debate flies over aid for beggars

Last week police and city officials were actively breaking up illegal and unsanitary camps set up in downtown Oslo by mostly Romanian beggars who have arrived in the Norwegian capital. That set off criticism from church officials and some politicians who think the beggars instead need sympathy and help. And that has set off loud [...]

Police rout illegal Romanian campers

Never before have city authorities in Oslo had to deal with so many illegal campgrounds, mostly set up by transient Romanians, as this summer. Police and officials from a city sanitation squad have been raiding camps on a daily basis, and trying to clean up after their illegal occupants. One of the more popular makeshift [...]

Beggars on tour all over Norway

Organized groups of beggars, mostly from southeastern Europe, are traveling around Norway this summer in hopes of coaxing coins from crowds of more conventional tourists. In a country where coins can be worth as much as USD 3, the begging can be lucrative. Newspaper Aftenposten reported Friday how one group of beggars from Bulgaria, Romania [...]

Justice Minister keen to halt begging

Norway’s Justice Minister Knut Storberget has come out in favour of reimposing some sort of ban on begging, even though his government was in power when an earlier ban was repealed. Today’s level of begging, he told newspaper Aftenposten, “has simply gone too far.” Storberget agrees with claims by judge and human rights expert Hanne [...]

Judge urges ban on begging

Beggars are back on the streets of Oslo and many other Norwegian cities, and officials fear their numbers will break a new record this summer. A judge who leads the Council of Europe’s efforts to fight human trafficking urges a ban on begging by foreigners in Norway. Hanne Sophie Greve, an appeals court judge in [...]