Forced contraception victims deserve more contrition from Denmark: Commentary

It felt like whiplash. First came the heartache on Aug. 11, when Aviaja-Luuna was taken from the embrace of her mother, Ivana Nikoline Brønlund, just an hour after what should have been the joyful celebration of her birth. It was the latest example of Denmark’s policy of forcibly separating Inuit newborns based on the racist and discredited methodology of a parenting competence test that punishes victims of trauma with an even greater trauma in violation of Danish law.

Then, just two weeks later, came new and heart-lifting feelings of joy that justice was at last at hand. It was announced that Copenhagen had finally apologized for its moral trespass against the Inuit of Greenland for its equally disturbing forced contraception scandal, known as the Spiral Case. The Greenlandic government also apologised for its part in continuing such abhorrent practices, albeit with less frequency, after 1992 (it’s now forbidden under Danish law).

A closer look at this public mea culpa leaves a bittersweet aftertaste, caused in part by what feels like an underwhelming and half-hearted attempt to atone for the sins of the past. Can it be just a few short months ago that the Danes and Greenlanders stood together shoulder-to-shoulder against the imperial ambitions of America, only to now confront such horror in their recent past?

The Spiral Case has festered like an open wound for decades. At last, an apology has been issued. As The Guardian wrote in an Aug. 27 headline: “Denmark issues first apology over forced contraception of Greenlandic women. Prime minister admits ‘systemic discrimination’ after thousands of girls and women fitted with IUDs without consent.” Danish PM Mette Frederiksen has acknowledged: “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility. Therefore, on behalf of Denmark, I would like to say: Sorry.”

When Saying Sorry Isn’t Sufficient

“Sorry” seems to grossly understate the gravity of the offense, and demands a deeper act of contrition. Offenses of this magnitude  need generational healing. They deserve generous compensation. They need repeated acts of contrition, resignations, imprisonments. They need justice.

Danish PM Frederiksen further clarified: “I apologise to the girls and women who have been subjected to systemic discrimination. Because they are Greenlanders. For experiencing both physical and psychological harm. For being let down.” But this was not just discrimination. This was a state-led campaign to suppress Greenland’s birthrate. It was an assault on the very future of a people. Sorry doesn’t even come close.

Greenland PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s words also sounded less than heartfelt and woefully insufficient as he apologized on behalf of Nuuk “for the harm and abuse that may have been inflicted on several women after we took over responsibility for our healthcare system.” May have been.

Naaja H. Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for justice and gender equality, further muddled the message of atonement in stating: “An apology is only fitting and I believe it was unavoidable in order to move forward on a path of healing. So I am very pleased by the apology but I also couldn’t see any way around it.” Only fitting. Unavoidable. Move forward. Path of healing. Couldn’t see any way around it. These disappointing words of equivocation seem eerily reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s unimpressive parsing of the meaning of the word ‘is’ during his impeachment trial.

On the other hand, Greenland’s representative to the Danish parliament, IA party member Aaja Chemnitz, captures the joyful nature of this moment for its many victims, one so long in coming: “An apology is important for a renewed relation between Greenland and Denmark,” she said. “What a joy.” But others remained disappointed.

Dark Chapters Come to Light

As Greenland’s PM Nielsen told the BBC: “For too long, the victims … have been silenced to death. It’s sad that an apology only comes now – it’s too late and too bad.” he said. “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility for the fact that the truth comes out, and that responsibility is placed where it belongs. The upcoming investigation will show the full extent of the assaults and help ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

As Frederiksen cautioned: “We must become more knowledgeable about our common past. Not because we can change it. But because we must acknowledge it. And learn from it” – and from “other dark chapters that deal with systemic discrimination against Greenlanders. Because they were Greenlanders.”

She explained that her “apology on behalf of Denmark is also an apology for these other failures for which Denmark is responsible,” adding: “Where Greenlanders have been systemically treated differently and inferiorly than other citizens of the kingdom.”

 Differently. Inferiorly. And as critics argue, genocidally. This includes forced separations as experienced by newborn Aviaja-Luuna two weeks ago, and the intentional suppression of Greenland’s birth rate causing thousands of girls and women so much pain, suffering and in many cases, irreversible sterility – with a nearly universal lack of informed consent, all violations of the mind, body, and spirit.

Indeed, Greenland’s former prime minister, Múte B. Egede, rightly called the Spiral Case a genocide. The same can be said of the other “dark chapters” the Danish PM has alluded to, of which we will be learning more in the weeks and months to come.

Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Three of Article II’s sections appear to apply to Danish mistreatment of Greenlanders (though the Danes would likely disagree, perhaps explaining why their apology lacks the absolute genuineness one should expect given the severity of this mistreatment – namely sections (b), (d) and (e).

It can be argued whether the mistreatment Greenlanders experienced for so long meets the definition of genocide, which requires dark intent and not just dark actions. At the very least, ‘Sorry’ and other half-hearted platitudes and equivocations must mark the beginning, and not the end, of the process of atonement. But much more is needed – much, much more.

The “dark chapters” that have transpired in Greenland under Danish rule must neither be forgotten nor forgiven. Let’s hope that Denmark steps up to the obligations that accompany a genuine apology, and shows through its future actions that it is truly repentant about its past – in a way that its newly articulated words of apology thus far have not.

Barry Scott Zellen is a Research Scholar in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut and a Senior Fellow (Arctic Security) at the Institute of the North. He is the author of “Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World.”