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Dozens of women in Greenland have heard the Prime Minister of Denmark, Met Fredericksen, officially apologize for a scandal that included thousands of Inuit, who forcibly force themselves to contraceptive windings as part of a controversial birth control program in the 60s and 70s.
“Dear women. Dear families. Dear Greenland. Today there is only one right thing to tell you. Excuse me,” Fredericksen told a packaged location in the center of the capital Nuk.
During an emotionally charged event, a woman stood with her back to the Prime Minister in protest, a black footprint by hand painted in her mouth.
“Excuse me for the injustice that was done against you,” Fredericksen said. “Because you were Greenland. Sorry for what was taken away by you. And for the pain it caused,” she continued. “On behalf of Denmark. Sorry.”
Naja Libert, who was one of the first of the Inuit granters to talk about the incident, received a standing ovation when she turned to the event on Wednesday.
“If we want to move forward, the apology is crucial,” she said.
An official investigation earlier this month has come to the conclusion that at least 4000 women have been implanted by the winding until 1970, which corresponds to approximately half of Greenland’s women of childbearing age.
In more than 300 cases discussed by the investigation, women and girls of 12 were equipped with IUD without their knowledge or consent.
Helping Fredericksen’s apology and the investigation, Naja Libert was also crucial that he did not study the possible human rights violations.
Fredericksen admitted that many women lived with trauma and physical complications and that some were not able to have children.
Among the women mentioned by the Prime Minister in her speech was Eliza Christensen, who carefully listened to the leader’s words and found her apology “very compelling.”
Although she said she was still accepting it, she told the BBC: “No mention of compensation at all, we are sad about it. It was almost like empty words.”
Prior to Wednesday’s apology, Met Fredericksen issued a statement outlining plans for the creation of a “coordination fund”, but it is not yet clear how many women will be proposed or when this will happen.
He also suggested that there would be payments to other Grenlans who were “failed and systematic discrimination” but did not give more details.
A court case requiring compensation was filed by a group of 143 women.
Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, and then became Denmark County before winning home management in 1979. However, Copenhagen led the healthcare system until 1992, when Greenland took responsibility.
Aviac Peterssen was 24 when a gynecologist told her that there was an IUD during a routine medical meeting.
Now at the age of 59, Peterssen believes that the device was inserted without her knowledge, during an abortion 10 years earlier.
Later, doctors found scars on her fallopian tubes and despite the operations that failed to have children.
She was skeptical of the time of the Danish apology, but she hoped to see an official reconciliation process.
“You weren’t asked. You didn’t have the opportunity to talk. You weren’t heard. You haven’t seen,” said Green’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederick Nielsen, adding that this is one of the darkest chapters in the country’s history.
Fredericksen’s apology comes against the background of increased control of Denmark’s relations with Greenland and the increasing international pressure, especially after the repeated demands of President Donald Trump to take control of the Arctic territory.
The case with IUD is one of several historical and present contradictions, including forced adoptions that have damaged the Danish-green-green relations.
More recently, another FlashPoint includes the removal of Inuit children from their families after tests for “parental competence”.
This week, a Danish authorities decision to separate Greenland’s young mother from her newborn daughter – an hour after she gave birth – was turned after the case caused outrage.
For Eliza Christensen, Denmark’s official apology brought a train of emotions. “The girl inside me, for the first time, felt that she was hugging a little from society.
“But I don’t know about the grown -up Alice (how) I use this excuse. Where are the children and grandchildren I have to have?”
