A small-town Danish politician has gained more prominence than perhaps he could have ever hoped for, as reports about him calling for the burning to death of all Chinese people have made their way to the country he wants to set on fire.
“I hope that it will be 140 degrees and that all the Chinese will burn, so the world will be free of that Chinese filth,” Fuat Yalan wrote on his Facebook page two weeks ago, according to the Copenhagen Post.
His comments came amid an ongoing heat wave with temperatures in Shanghai reaching temperatures last experienced in imperial China some 140 years ago.
In an interview with the Helsingør Dagblad, Yalan, a member of the ruling social-democratic party, added further fuel to the controversy by saying that he stood to his words and that he would be willing to personally kill Chinese people.
“If there was a Chinese person in front of me right now I would shoot him,” he said. “I don’t care if I’m thrown out of the party, kicked out of Denmark or shot myself.”