- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
- Zverev scrapes through, Djokovic cruises to Shanghai Masters last 16
- Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin: Bob Woodward book
- Gauff answers critics: 'It's hard to win all the time'
- Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained
- China says raised 'serious concerns' with US over trade curbs
- Boeing delivers 27 MAX jets in September despite strike
- Italy seek Nations League consistency as Germany continue rebuild
- From boom to budgeting as reality bites for Saudi football
- US trade gap narrowest in five months as imports slip
- Stay and 'you are going to die': Florida braces for next hurricane
- England 96-1 after Salman's century lifts Pakistan to 556
- Hollywood star Idris Elba champions African cinema in Ghana
- Djokovic rolls Cobolli to make Shanghai Masters last 16
- Milan's Hernandez receives two-game suspension after referee rant
- Geoffrey Hinton, soft-spoken godfather of AI
- Ex-Barcelona and Spain great Iniesta retires aged 40
- Ex-skipper Skelton eyes Wallabies November return
- Spanish great Iniesta leaves indelible legacy after retirement
- Indian Kashmir elects first regional government in a decade
- Duo wins Physics Nobel for key breakthroughs in AI
- September second-warmest on record: EU climate monitor
- Pastor wanted by US for sex trafficking to run for Philippine senate
- Mozambican writer Mia Couto dreams future leaders set an 'example'
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free soon after cleared of separate sex crimes
- China says to take anti-dumping measures against EU brandy imports
- German suspect in 'Maddie' case cleared in separate sex crimes trial
- Israel expands offensive against Hezbollah in south Lebanon
- Bangladesh's Yunus says no elections before reforms
- England strike twice as Pakistan reach 397-6 at lunch in first Test
- Taiwan's Foxconn says building world's largest 'superchip' plant
- Kenya's deputy president faces impeachment vote
- N. Korean soldiers 'highly likely' killed in Ukraine: Seoul
- 'Appeals Centre' to referee EU social media disputes
- US Supreme Court to hear 'ghost guns' regulation case
- 'Small' oil leaks detected in Samoa after NZ navy shipwreck
- Nobel literature jury may go for non-Western writer
- At Istanbul church, blessed spring offers hope to Christians and Muslims
- From Bolivia to Indonesia, deforestation continues apace
- Myanmar to send rep to regional summit for first time in three years
- Prabowo set to lead bolder Indonesia on world stage
- Tampa zoo rushes Chompers the porcupine and others to safety as Milton nears
- New Japan PM to hold talks on ASEAN sidelines
- Record number of climbers chase 14-peak dream in Tibet
- Former South Korea clinic for US 'comfort women' to be demolished
RBGPF | -0.46% | 60.52 | $ | |
RYCEF | 1.29% | 6.97 | $ | |
GSK | -1.56% | 38.035 | $ | |
NGG | 0.47% | 65.79 | $ | |
SCS | -0.27% | 12.915 | $ | |
BCC | -0.38% | 140.74 | $ | |
CMSC | -0.06% | 24.555 | $ | |
RELX | 0.93% | 46.47 | $ | |
RIO | -4.87% | 66.385 | $ | |
BCE | -0.74% | 33.285 | $ | |
CMSD | 0.04% | 24.801 | $ | |
VOD | -0.36% | 9.655 | $ | |
AZN | -0.34% | 76.61 | $ | |
JRI | 0.15% | 13.2 | $ | |
BTI | -0.14% | 35.15 | $ | |
BP | -3.48% | 32.025 | $ |
Greenland women seek justice over forced contraception
Henriette Berthelsen was separated from her family at 11 and forced to wear a contraceptive coil, a trauma she buried until she and 142 other Greenlandic women sued the Danish state.
"I've suppressed so much," Berthelsen said.
"I had an IUD (intrauterine device) fitted nine times since the age of 13, according to my medical records," the psychologist and activist explained with poise and dignity.
"Luckily -- if one can say luckily -- they fell out," she said, her voice cracking.
"I remember being in so much pain," she told AFP at her home in a Copenhagen suburb.
Now 66, Berthelsen is one of the 143 Greenland Inuits who have sued the Danish state for violating their rights during its forced contraception campaign from the 1960s to 1980.
Some 4,500 fertile women were forced to undergo the procedure, often without their or their family's consent.
Denmark carried out the campaign to limit the birth rate in the Arctic territory, which had not been its colony since 1953 but was still under its control.
Berthelsen's parents never consented to her coils.
At the recommendation of the state, she was sent to Denmark for a year as a young girl to learn Danish and then to a Danish boarding school in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, far from her hometown of Qeqertarsuatsiaat in southwestern Greenland.
One day, "there was a sign that said that all the girls from the boarding school had to go to the infirmary", she said.
The IUDs kept falling out, she recalled, holding a photograph of herself from the time -- a young girl with long dark plaits.
- 'Never contradict a Dane' -
For a long time she didn't tell anyone about her ordeal, remembering what her mother had taught her: 'Never contradict a Dane'.
For many of her classmates, the experience had a devastating impact.
"In my class there were several girls who were never able to have children," she said.
Berthelsen herself went on to have two kids.
She is now campaigning to get the Danish state to pay for therapy for the victims living in Denmark.
Greenland already pays such benefits to those living in the territory.
Ebbe Volquardsen, a lecturer at the University of Nuuk, said the women were seeking justice now because the time was ripe.
"It simply takes time for marginalised groups, including Greenlanders within the Danish realm, to develop an awareness of systemic inequality and the ability to articulate it as a problem," she explained.
One of the victims spoke out in the media several years ago about the trauma she experienced.
A podcast series by Danish public broadcaster DR in 2022 then revealed the extent of the campaign.
"It's important that the Danish state takes responsibility," said Berthelsen.
"Some things happened as a result of colonialism" -- like "deciding, instead of the people (concerned), whether they are too many or too few, committing a genocide, committing violence and offences against young girls", she fumed.
Historian Soren Rud told AFP: "In the context of the 2020s, the authoritarian elements of the campaign stood out as a shocking example of how the colonial and post-colonial situation affected the interaction between Greenlanders and Danes."
- 'Big success' -
The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Mads Pramming, said one of the documents presented as evidence in the case is a copy of a 1971 review by a doctor extolling the "success" of the policy.
"There were 9,000 fertile women and, in just four years, they inserted an IUD in half of them. So 4,500. And the population dived enormously," he said.
"Some towns had zero births during that period. After four years they concluded (it was a) big success."
The large majority of the plaintiffs -- the oldest of whom is now 82 -- were left with lasting scars.
"Of the 143, about 50 of them had their uterus removed and were not able to have kids, and all of them suffered" physically and mentally, he said.
"Their own testimony is going to be the hardest evidence in the case."
A fire destroyed many of the women's medical files but that's unlikely to change much.
"I don't think the doctor would put in the medical file that he inserted this IUD in a 12-year-old girl with her crying and being held by two other adults," Pramming said.
In October 2023, 67 of the plaintiffs filed claims for compensation from the Danish state of 300,000 kroner ($42,000) each.
"All of the requests for compensation will be evaluated by (us)," the health ministry told AFP in an email.
The case comes as Denmark and Greenland are re-examining their past relationship in a historic parliamentary committee.
In addition, researchers have opened a probe specifically into the forced contraception campaign.
Its conclusions are due in mid-2025.
F.Ferraz--PC