Spiral scandal challenges Greenland’s ties to Denmark again – NRK Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
Child was forcibly relocated and women were given prevention without knowing it.
When the dark story comes to light again, it creates new dividing lines between Greenland and Denmark.
Several of the 4,500 women who received the IUD have stood up and told about their painful experiences.
– I could not fight
Greenlandic Naja Lyberth has told Denmark’s radio that she was 14 years old when she had one inserted helical by a Danish doctor in Maniitsoq in 1976. Without her choosing it herself.
– I could not fight. I was not brought up to speak out against the authorities. I wish I had done it, but I could not as a 14-year-old, says Naja.
Although the IUD was intended to protect Greenlandic women, the effects were often trauma, pain and discomfort. The spiral, of the Lippes Loop type, was far more painful than today’s spiral variants.
– It was hell. I had this foreign body inside me for several years. I had to go home from school due to major menstrual cramps. It was so painful. I had gotten people before the spiral, but this was something else. After the spiral, it just hurt insanely, Naja remembers.
Britta Mortensen was 15 and was going to boarding school in Jutland when she was forced to get a spiral.
– I had to spread my legs, and when they put it in it hurt terribly, she tells AFP.
It was the principal of the boarding school who told her she had no choice.
– She said: “Yes, you should have a spiral inserted, even if you say no”, says a marked Mortensen.
The parents were thousands of miles away, and never learned of the intervention.
Got to spirals
On the northwest coast of Greenland lies the small town of Qasigiannguit. In 1975, 13-year-old Elisibanguak Jeremiassen was in an operating room waiting.
She had received a stern message from her older sister to have a coil inserted. Elisibanguak had already been sexually assaulted.
It hurt, but the pain was going to subside, she had been told. It did not.
A year later, she therefore went to the doctor. The abdomen was examined and the spiral appeared to be gone. Then she had a new spiral inserted.
But the first spiral had not disappeared, an X-ray showed at a later play visit. It had just crawled further up.
And then she had to lie there, a third time on the operating table, to take out the first coil.
Is not alone
Britta Mortensen says she had not realized that others had experienced the same thing as her.
– I was ashamed. I have not talked to anyone about it before now, says the now 63-year-old woman.
The investigation DR presented in May shows that more than 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls were given spirals between 1960 and 1991.
This corresponds to about half of all Greenlandic women of reproductive age at the time.
It is described as a Danish spiral campaign to bring down the birth rates on the island.
Most do not give consent to the procedure, and in several cases one can not inform. Several women have said that they only discovered the spiral they had in them after decades.
- DR has also made a podcast series in five episodes about The spiral campaign. You can listen to it her.
“Genocide”
One of the Greenlandic politicians in the Danish Parliament, Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, describes the spiral campaign as a genocide.
– Can one imagine that the Danish government should say that we must save, it is too many Danes, so half of all Danish women must get a forced spiral? No, you will never hear anyone suggest that, she says Sermitsiaq.
Danish international law experts such as Greenlandic KNR has talked to, however, says it can not be considered genocide.
– But the fact that these words are used at all shows how serious the case actually is, says Ebbe Volquardsen, who is a cultural historian at the University of Greenland Ilsimatusarfik in Nuuk
Naja Lyberth thinks it is important that the women now speak out.
– I would like to decolonize my own body. It was as if I was state property. My body, my abdomen, was the property of the state, not mine. Now I can say it’s my body.
Children taken from the family in the social experiment
This is not the first time that abuse has been detected in Greenland.
Until recently, a child born out of wedlock in Greenland before 1964 has not had the right to know who their father was. Many of the fathers were Danish. Several of the children who are called “the legal orphans” in Denmark are now suing the Danish state.
22 other children who were part of a social experiment that before Greenland became a Danish county, have also sued.
They were taken from their Greenlandic families and sent to the Danish mainland. They were to become a Danish-speaking elite in Greenland, but never returned to their families.
– It has often been put on as an exception, a stand-alone mistake, especially in the Danish narrative, says Volquardsen.
He points out that for a period of 30 years, several thousand Greenlandic children were transported to Denmark for various reasons.
Decolonization
Greenland was a Danish colony for 230 years, but in the post-war period the demands for decolonization began to grow. However, Greenland was not decolonised in the “usual” way.
– The Greenlanders wanted change and renewal before the war, but it was the Danish colonial power that in a way held them back with a kind of guardianship policy, says Ebbe Volquardsen.
In 1953, Greenland became a Danish county, before the island in 1979 gained autonomy, which was further expanded in 2009. In the 1950s, Danish officials flocked to the island in connection with it going from colony to county.
– Danish civil servants and workers made up between 15 and 20 percent of the county’s population. In practice, this meant that many Greenlanders were confronted with Danes in everyday life for the first time. They then realized that the two ethnic groups were treated differently, says Volquardsen.
Modernization
Large housing programs were launched to bring Greenlanders together in larger cities, with better conditions for fishing on an industrial scale. Schools and health care were set up.
– Of course it sounds very good, and it also had a good effect. But this led to a problematic view of the relationship between Denmark and Greenland. The discussion was that everything Denmark did was for the well-being of the Greenlanders and something Denmark should be honored for, says Volquardsen
At the same time, birth rates began to rise. Every fourth child was born without marriage for a period, no Danish authorities saw it as a problem for young Greenlanders, while the modernization of the island became more expensive than expected.
In 1966, the so-called spiral campaign started.
Three years later, it is said that 35 percent of all fertile women in Greenland had a IUD inserted.
The number of births was more than halved in seven years.
Reconciliation
Denmark and Greenland have tried several times to carry out reconciliation projects. The spiral campaign has led to demands for a new job. Several demands that everything that has happened between the two parties since World War II must be reviewed.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has recently apologized on behalf of Denmark to the Greenlanders who were forcibly transferred as children. Volquardsen says it seems that the Prime Minister understands that it is in Denmark’s interest to make up for it.
– I think she has inserted that it is necessary to reconcile in one way or another if Denmark is to have a good relationship with Greenland in the future, regardless of whether it is within the Danish kingdom or bilaterally between two states, says Volquardsen.