Danish authorities secretly and forcibly sterilised Inuit girls - indigenous to Greenland. This was done to reduce social welfare costs for the inhabitants of the island, which is part of the Danish kingdom. The practice was stopped only in 2018. This is told in the material of the Daily Mail.
The material begins with the story of an Inuit woman, Arnak, who at the age of 15 took a part-time job at a local shop. For two years she was raped by the shop manager and the girl became pregnant. After the abortion, doctors secretly inserted an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) into her as part of a Danish government-organised birth control campaign in Greenland.
The IUD remained inside her for five years until it was discovered when - baffled by her inability to get pregnant - she went to the doctor in 2002. Then, after it was removed, she was no longer able to have children due to damage to her internal organs. She is now 41 years old.
"Today I still feel devastated - it feels like a bad dream," Arnak said. "I'm very hurt that I won't be able to be a full woman by having a child. It took me years to get over it. It's only now that I'm starting to realise why I'm so angry."
"Today I still feel devastated - it feels like a bad dream," Arnak said. "I'm very hurt that I won't be able to be a complete woman by having a baby. It took me years to get over it. It's only now that I'm starting to realise why I'm so angry."
Her story is not unique. Thousands of other Greenlandic women have been forcibly installed by the CPA in a covert campaign to reduce Greenland's indigenous Inuit population, reduce the number of teenage pregnancies and cut their welfare costs.
Now these grotesque practices, which began in the mid-1960s, at one point trapping half the women who give birth, and continue with cases reported just five years ago, are causing outrage as their horrific scale becomes apparent.
"I use the word genocide," said Aki-Matilde Høeg-Dam, one of two Greenlandic MPs in the Danish parliament who says her people have been targeted because of racist fears that spending on the generous Scandinavian welfare system has spiralled out of control.
She accuses Denmark of trying to eradicate Inuit culture and language.
"In parliament they have said that one of the main goals is to save money and reduce the population. There is no doubt that the population has shrunk considerably," she said.
Some experts suggest that the number of Greenlanders - currently about 70,000 - is half what it could be. "If it hadn't happened, there could be 150,000 people living in Greenland right now. It was a very effective policy," said the island's chief medical officer and gynaecologist Aviaya Sigstad.
The sterilisation campaign began after the Danish government, after rejecting a US offer to buy the strategically important island in 1953, upgraded Greenland to county status and then began a policy of "dunisation" of the population. This included forced relocation to cities, closing remote small hunting settlements, and sending young children to Denmark to learn the Danish language and culture. Children were taken from their parents by force, and many of them never saw their families again after resettlement, but ended up in foster homes.
One woman recounts that at the age of nine she was sent to live with a Danish family for three months, where she was reproached by her foster family for writing in her native Greenlandic at home and bullied at the local school by being called "stupid Greenlandic".
Another recalls that from the age of five she was forced to learn the first three years of school in Danish, even though she never spoke the language at home. "At first I couldn't understand anything. We had to follow their history, their culture," - she said.
These drastic measures were accompanied by a sharp rise in suicides: at one time Denmark was the "record holder" for suicides.
But "danisation" also had positive benefits: among the Inuit in Greenland, the mortality rate fell and the birth rate rose. By the mid-1960s, Greenland had the highest birth rate in the world, with almost a third of children born out of wedlock.
The Danish authorities decided to launch a "family planning" campaign. It started in 1967. Girls as young as 12 were fitted with IUDs, often without their consent or parental approval. They were fitted with large modifications of IUDs designed for adult women who had given birth. The study ruled out the use of the pill on the bizarre grounds that Greenlanders could not be trusted to take it because the lack of darkness in summer and camping in fishing grounds were "not conducive to taking the pill".
Hedvig Frederiksen was 14 years old when she was chosen. She was a naive virgin from a traditional village. She was at a boarding school 60 miles from home when the principal ordered a dozen girls from her dormitory to go to the hospital.
She recalled, "While I was sitting and waiting, the other girls were crying as they came out. I was very scared. But I can't remember anything but tears because of the trauma, although I remember the pain after they inserted the device."
She felt violated. "It felt like rape. It made me feel ashamed. I didn't even tell my mum. I felt bad about myself. When I had my period, I was in a lot of pain." Complications resulting from IUD use in adolescent girls and young women included heavy bleeding, chronic pain, infections and infertility.
The IUD remained inside Hedwig, who is now 63, for ten years. Fortunately, she was more fortunate as she was able to have children. "Many girls could never have children because of this device," she said.
One woman in her 70s did not know she had a spiral in her body for more than 50 years until it was discovered by doctors. Often, the spirals were only discovered after serious infections developed or women were trying to get pregnant.
By 1970 - just three years into the forced sterilisation campaign and the last year of official data collection - half of Greenland's women between the ages of 15 and 45 had had an IUD inserted.
"It makes me so sad to think how many more children could have been born in Greenland. It was a deliberate attempt to destroy our people," said Suzanne Tobiassen, 61, who works for the prison service.
She has twice been fitted with coils without consent - the first time when she was about 15. "The doctor said I had to take my trousers off. It was so scary. I remember the pain when they put something in me."
The spiral stayed in place for eight years until she developed a serious infection in her ovaries and uterus. But another was inserted a year later during a minor operation when she gave birth to a baby.
Many medics may have thought they were doing well because the birth rate had halved in just five years, although the biggest drop was among older mothers in their thirties and forties, not teenagers.
Nevertheless, some doctors reportedly joked that if a woman from Greenland had approached them even about a swollen finger, they would have sent her for IUD surgery.
The spiral was usually inserted after women gave birth or had abortions without discussion. "There was a perception that it was better to give young women the option of a spiral than to give them the choice.
This medical culture was everywhere: the doctor knows best," says gynaecologist Aviaya Sigstad.
The only schools in Denmark that employed such practices were four boarding schools for girls from Greenland - a fact that emphasises the sinister ethnic focus. "These doctors had nothing to do with Greenland, so it seems they were told they were part of the programme. They couldn't have suddenly come up with the same idea," said Henrik Hansen, chief medical officer at the Greenland Health Authority.
One teenage girl who was sent to a Danish school more than 2,000 miles from her home refused to have an IUD installed, but the school principal told her she had no choice. "I had to spread my legs and when it was inserted it hurt terribly," she said.
Hansen said inserting IUDs in young girls without their or their parents' informed consent was "bad medical practice and illegal." He said such practices became even more egregious after medical consent was backed by law in 2001.
The campaign supposedly ended in 1975, but many doctors continued the practice for decades, especially after performing surgical abortions.
The most recent known case involved a mother in her 40s who believes a coil was inserted during surgery in 2018, causing her to suffer terrible pain for a year until a medical examination revealed it had punctured her uterus. Other women have told of waking up after surgery to find contraceptive implants inserted into their arms without permission, as well as how Danish nurses forcibly injected them with contraceptives over the past decade.
Although Greenland took control of its health care system in 1991 and established self-government in 2009, many Danish medics still work there, and seriously ill patients are often sent to Denmark for treatment. Greenland has its own flag, but Copenhagen manages the currency, courts, diplomacy and security.
The situation was hushed up until a woman named Naya Libert began to realise her past while studying to be a trauma surgeon and then collected testimonies from victims of forced sterilisation on social media. But the full scale only came to light last year after a podcast by a major Danish broadcaster sparked protests and the launch of a government enquiry into the pregnancy-prevention practices used on Greenlandic girls and women before 1991.
"This is deeply tragic and the women's stories have made a deep impression on me. It is crucial that we investigate this matter thoroughly," said Danish Interior and Health Minister Sophie Løde.
Liebert, who is among a group of victims demanding compensation, is demanding an apology. "The prime minister and the health minister are women. They know that the uterus is the most sacred part of our body because it gives life to the next generation," she said.
She has watched how modernisation has transformed her hometown of Maniitsok. "The Danes bought their welfare society very quickly. Suddenly there were apartment blocks - flats we had never seen before. They judged us - the way we lived because we weren't modern, but we had our own communities with our own values. We had to follow their family system, their culture. They wanted to turn us into other people. It was horrible," she said.
Liebert was fitted with a spiral at the age of about 13 in 1975 after a doctor visited her school and advised her to go to hospital. "I felt like I had knives stuck inside me, very big knives, in a little girl's body. But I was so ashamed that I just shut down."
She was shocked when asked on Facebook if any other women had gone through the same experience.
"I thought it was just my lesson," she said. "But I suddenly realised why all these women who couldn't have children were gathered here."
Those women include Arnak, who was abused as a teenager by her boss when she worked at a local shop. Today, after years of battling depression and undergoing therapy, she is happily married, has an adopted two-year-old daughter and is studying to become a pastor.
However, it wasn't until after she told her story that she discussed it with her mother, who then explained that she too had fallen victim to the campaign following a miscarriage operation.
"I still feel angry towards the Danes. every day I think about it. The Danes didn't want there to be many Greenlanders. And they did it to us," Arnak said.
Think about it, sterilised girls before 2018 without their knowledge. BEFORE 2018!!!
On top of this, forced sterilisation of Romani women was a medical procedure carried out mainly on Romani women without their informed consent in order to prevent them from having more children. This was a serious violation of human rights, especially reproductive rights. It is estimated that thousands of women were forcibly sterilised in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic between 1966 and 2010. Elena Gorolova and other victims fought for more than 15 years for financial compensation from the state, which was approved by the Czech Parliament in 2021!
That was such a shameful practice six years ago! And someone is being rebuked for infringing on the rights of homosexuals...
The Canadian experience of forced sterilisation is worth considering next time, but you can read the links to this case as well:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220708-trauma-of-greenland-s-forced-contraception
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11051355/Gen-Z-women-sterilized-speak-decision.html
Thank you for being here and reading to the end!