Children were forcibly relocated, and women received contraception without knowing it. When the dark story comes to light again now, it creates new dividing lines between Greenland and Denmark. Several of the 4,500 women who received the IUD have now come forward and told about their painful experiences. – I could not fight against Greenlandic Naja Lyberth has told Danmarks Radio that she was 14 years old when she had a coil inserted by a Danish doctor in Maniitsoq in 1976. Without her choosing it herself. NEWLY CONFIRMED: Naja Lyberth was 14 years old and was confirmed in 1976. the following year she received a IUD. – I could not fight back. 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. Spiral contraception Photo: DR Lippes Loop is a contraceptive that first became available in 1962. It was used frequently to drive down birth rates in Greenland until the end of the 20th century. Lippes Loop is placed directly in the uterus and is shaped like a spiral. Thus, it has also given its name to the form of contraception itself. It acts as a contraceptive because it is a foreign body in the uterus, so the body tries to repel it. This also rejects sperm and fertilized eggs. Today, the smaller, t-shaped copper coils and hormone coils are primarily used. The copper in a copper coil prevents the sperm from reaching the cervix, while the hormones in a IUD ensure that the sperm do not enter the cervix. Both types of spirals are brought up in the folded state in a thin plastic tube. Then they unfold. Today’s spirals are much easier and more gentle to set up and can also be used by women who have not had children yet. – It was hell. I had this foreign body inside me for several years. I had to go home from school due to severe menstrual cramps. It was so painful. I had my period before the IUD, but this was something else. After the spiral, it just hurt insanely, Naja remembers. HOSE: This is what a Lippes Loop spiral looks like when it is pulled out of the packaging. Photo: Washington Area Spark / Flickr Britta Mortensen was 15 and went 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 an embossed Mortensen. The parents were thousands of kilometers away, and never got to know about the intervention. FORCE: At the boarding school in Jutland, Britta Mortensen was strictly told that she had to Photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP Got two spirals On the northwest coast of Greenland is the small town of Qasigiannguit. In 1975, 13-year-old Elisibanguak Jeremiassen was in an operating room waiting. She had been strictly instructed by her older sister to have a coil inserted. Elisibanguak had already been sexually abused. It hurt, but the pain would 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, showed an X-ray at a later doctor’s visit. It had just crawled further up. And then she had to lie there, a third time on the operating table, to remove the first coil. POWERLESS: Elisibanguak Jeremiassen got a spiral when she was 13 years old. She says she felt sad and angry, but most of all powerless. – We should be obedient and do as we were told, she says. Photo: Peter Langkilde / DR Is not alone Britta Mortensen says she had not imagined that others had experienced the same as her. – I was ashamed. I have not talked to anyone about it until now, says the now 63-year-old woman. The survey DR presented in May shows that more than 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls were given IUDs between 1960 and 1991. This corresponds to about half of all Greenlandic women of reproductive age at that time. It is described as a Danish spiral campaign to reduce birth rates on the island. Most did not consent to the operation, and in several cases the parents were not informed. Several women have said that they only discovered the spirals 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 here. “Genocide” One of the Greenlandic politicians in the Danish Parliament, Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, describes the spiral campaign as a genocide. WANTS AN ACCOUNT: Aki-Mathilda Høegh-Dam (25) is a member of the Folketing for the Greenlandic Social Democratic Party Siumut. She demands a statement from the Danish government. Photo: Steen Brogaard / Folketinget – Can you imagine that the Danish government would say that we have to save, there are too many Danes, so half of all Danish women have to get a forced spiral? No, you will never hear anyone suggest that, she says to Sermitsiaq. Danish international law experts that Greenlandic KNR has spoken to, however, say that it can not be considered genocide. – But 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 FELT LIKE A KNIFE: Naja Lyberth says the spiral in her uterus felt like a knife . – It felt like an abuse. That the state took my virginity, she says almost 50 years later. Photo: Peter Langkilde / DR Naja Lyberth believes it is important that women now speak out. – I would like to decolonize my own body. It was as if I were state property. My body, my abdomen, was the property of the state, not mine. Now I can say it’s my body. PLAY: Children play in a ball binge in Tasiilaq in East Greenland. Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB Children taken from families in social experiment This is not the first time that abuse has been discovered in Greenland. Until recently, children born out of wedlock in Greenland before 1964 have not had the right to know who their father was. Many of the fathers were Danish. Several of the children who are called “the legally fatherless” in Denmark, are now suing the Danish state. 22 other children who were part of a social experiment just 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 seen as an exception, a single 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. GROWING FAST: The small town of Tasiilaq is considered to be East Greenland’s only town, and is also one of the fastest growing towns in the country. Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB 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. COLONIALIST: A vandalized statue of the Norwegian-Danish colonialist Hans Egede in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, 21 June 2020. Photo: RITZAU SCANPIX / Reuters 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 for the first time many Greenlanders were confronted with Danes in everyday life. 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 created. – 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 good of the Greenlanders and something Denmark should be honored for, says Volquardsen HEADING: Excerpt from Grønlandsavisen in 1966 about the birth rate in Greenland. Graphics: DR At the same time, birth rates began to rise. Every fourth child was born out of wedlock for a period, which the Danish authorities saw 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 spiral inserted. The number of births was more than halved in seven years. ROYAL VISIT: Queen Margrethe visits Greenland in 2021. Photo: RITZAU SCANPIX / Reuters Reconciliation Denmark and Greenland have tried several times to carry out reconciliation projects. The spiral campaign has led to demands for new such work. Several demand that everything that has happened between the two parties since World War II be reviewed. RECONCILIATION: Greenland’s national government chairman Mute B. Egede and Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / AP 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 realized 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.
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Spiral scandal challenges Greenland’s ties to Denmark again – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
