Danish PM says sorry to Inuits forcibly moved to Denmark

Yahoo – AFP, March 9, 2022 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said sorry to the Inuits at an
emotional ceremony in Copenhagen (AFP/Liselotte Sabroe) (Liselotte Sabroe)

Denmark's prime minister apologised in person Wednesday to six Greenlandic Inuits removed from their families and taken to Copenhagen more than 70 years ago as part of an experiment to create a Danish-speaking elite. 

"What you were subjected to was terrible. It was inhumane. It was unfair. And it was heartless", Mette Frederiksen told the six at an emotional ceremony in the capital. 

"We can take responsibility and do the only thing that is fair, in my eyes: to say sorry to you for what happened," she said. 

In the summer of 1951, 22 Inuit children between the ages of five and eight were sent to Denmark, which was Greenland's colonial power at the time but has since gained autonomy. 

The parents had been promised their children would have a better life, learn Danish and return to Greenland one day as the future elite, in a deal between authorities in Copenhagen and Nuuk, the Greenland capital. 

In Denmark, the children were not allowed to have any contact with their own families. After two years, 16 of the group were sent home to Greenland, but placed in an orphanage. 

The others were adopted by Danish families. Several of the children never saw their real families again. 

An inquiry into their fate concluded more than half were very negatively affected by the experiment. 

Only six of the 22 are alive today. 

"It was a big surprise for me when I realised that there were only six of them left, because they were not that old," their lawyer Mads Pramming told AFP. 

"They told me that the others had died of sorrow," he added. 

The PM's apology is "a big success for them", he said, two weeks after they each received financial compensation of 250,000 kroner (33,600 euros, $37,200). 

"First they got an apology in writing, and then the compensation for the violation of their human rights, and now they will have a face-to-face," with the prime minister, Pramming said. 

"Nothing had happened until now and it's you, Mette, who took the initiative to set up a commission two years ago", one of the six, Eva Illum, said. 

In December 2020, the prime minister offered the six an official apology.

Trump slams Danish PM's 'nasty' rejection of Greenland deal

Yahoo – AFP, Sebastian Smith, with Camille BAS-WOHLERT in Copenhagen, August 21, 2019

President Donald Trump has postponed a meeting with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen
because she does not want to sell Greenland to the United States (AFP Photo/
Tobias SCHWARZ, Nicholas Kamm)

Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump snapped back Wednesday at the Danish prime minister's "nasty" dismissal of his attempts to purchase Greenland, heightening a row which had already prompted the US president to scrap a state visit.

Hours after announcing he would not visit Copenhagen next month as planned, Trump accused Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of insulting the United States as a whole by rejecting talk of buying Greenland as "absurd."

With Frederiksen voicing her annoyance at Trump's cancellation, the war of words marks another spat between the US and one of its traditional allies since Trump came to power two years ago on an avowedly "America First" foreign policy platform.

Trump -- who made his name as a New York property mogul -- has characterized his idea of buying Greenland as essentially "a large real estate" deal, arguing it is a burden on Denmark as the autonomous territory's economy depends heavily on subsidies from Copenhagen.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he was not the first US president to have raised the idea of buying the vast Arctic island which has housed an American air base since even before it became formally a part of Denmark.

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: "I am both annoyed and surprised 

that the US president has cancelled a state visit" (AFP Photo/Mads Claus Rasmussen)

"The prime minister (Frederiksen) used a terrible word when talking about something we've been talking about for years," he said.

"It was not a nice statement the way she blew me off. We've done a lot for Denmark ... She said absurd. That's not the right word to use.

"It was not a nice way of doing it. She could have just said no, we'd rather not do it.

"She's not talking to me, she's talking to the United States of America."

The idea of the US buying Greenland was initially dismissed as a joke by some, but its strategic location has grown at a time when both Russia and China are flexing their muscles.

Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, when it became part of the Danish Realm, and it gained "autonomous territory" status in 1979.

Its 55,000 inhabitants -- of whom 17,000 reside in the capital Nuuk -- are more than 90 percent Inuit, an indigenous group from Central Asia.

Greenland's population of around 60,000 was taken aback by US President's 

Trump's offer to buy the autonomous Danish island (AFP Photo/Linda Kastrup)

The government of Greenland has insisted that the island is "not for sale" and Frederiksen told reporters on Wednesday that she fully endorsed that view.

"I am both annoyed and surprised that the US president has cancelled a state visit," said the prime minister who had been preparing to host Trump early next month.

But, she added, "Denmark and the US are not in crisis, the US is one of our closest allies" and the invitation to visit was still open.

'Show more respect'

The postponement of Trump's visit -- which was announced on Twitter -- has sparked strong reactions in Denmark.

"Reality transcends imagination ... this man is unpredictable," said Morten Ostergaard of the Social Liberal Party, which is part of the ruling coalition.

"For no reason, Trump assumes that (an autonomous) part of our country is for sale. Then insultingly cancels visit that everybody was preparing for," tweeted Rasmus Jarlov, a member of the opposition Conservative Party.

Map of Greenland with key facts about the autonomous Danish territory (AFP 

Photo/Sabrina BLANCHARD)

"Are parts of the US for sale? Alaska? Please show more respect."

Nonetheless, conservative newspaper Jyllands-Posten wrote that Trump's actions ultimately benefitted Denmark, highlighting Greenland's geopolitical value.

"Mette Frederiksen has been given the opportunity to emphasize that Greenland's big affairs are in fact decided in Copenhagen ... strengthening Denmark's position in this great strategic game at stake over the Arctic," it said.

The territory is home to the US airbase Thule, crucial during the Cold War as a first line of monitoring against a potential Russian attack.

But the melting polar ice sheet is opening up potentially major shipping routes, and untapped reserved of oil, gas and minerals will become increasingly accessible, leading Russia and China to show mounting interest in the region.

As far back as 1867, the US State Department expressed interest in the island. And in 1946, President Harry S. Truman offered $100 million in gold, or parts of Alaska, in exchange for Greenland.

Greenland ice melting at record speed

Satellite data shows ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are declining at record speed. The annual loss of ice has doubled in the case of Greenland and tripled in the West Antarctic compared to figures from 2009.

Deutsche Welle, 21 Aug 2014

Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven mapping elevation changes of Greenlandic and Antarctic glaciers have found ice sheets are melting at record pace. Per year, the ice sheets dump some 500 cubic kilometers (132,000 gallons) of ice into the oceans. The researchers say that compares to an ice sheet that's 600 meters (1970 feet) thick and covers an area as big as the German city of Hamburg - or the Southeast Asian nation of Singapore.

The research team headed by Veit Helm used around two years' worth of data from the ESA CryoSat-2 satellite to create digital elevation models of Greenland and Antarctica. The results were published in the online magazine of the European Geoscience Union (EGU) "The Cryosphere".

"The new elevation maps are snapshots of the current state of the ice sheets," Helm said. "The elevations are very accurate, to just a few meters in height, and cover close to 16 million square kilometers of the area of the ice sheets." Helm says this includes an additional 500,000 square kilometers that weren't covered in previous elevation models from altimetry.

Space technology shows declining ice mass

Helm and his team analyzed all data from the CryoSat-2 radar altimeter SIRAL in order to come up with these detailed maps. The satellite with this new radar equipment was launched in 2010. Satellite altimeters measure the height of an ice sheet by sending radar or laser pulses which are then reflected by the surface of the glaciers or surrounding areas of water and recorded by the satellite.

The researchers used other satellite data as well to document how elevation has changed between 2011 and 2014. Ice sheets gain mass through snowfall and lose it through melting and accelerating glaciers, which carry ice from the interior of the ice sheet to the ocean.

"We need to understand where and to which extent the ice thickness across the glaciers has changed. Only then can we analyze the drivers of these changes and find out how much ice sheets contribute to global sea level rise," lead author Helm said.

Rapid ice loss over a short period of time

The team used more than 200 million SIRAL data points for Antarctica and some 14 million data points for Greenland to create the elevation maps. The results show that Greenland alone is losing around 375 cubic kilometers of ice per year.

Compared to data which was collected in 2009, the loss of mass from the Greenland ice sheet has doubled. The rate of ice discharge from the West Antarctic ice sheet tripled during the same period.

85 percent of Greenland is covered with ice - melting ice sheets
contribute to rising sea levels

"If you combine the two, they are thinning at a rate of 500 cubic kilometers per year. That is the highest rate observed since altimetry satellite records began about 20 years ago," said glaciologist Angelika Humbert, who co-authored the AWI study.

The researchers detected the biggest elevation changes at the Jakobshavn Glacier in West Greenland and Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. This corresponds with other scientific research on both areas.

Whereas the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula, on the far west of the continent, are rapidly losing volume, East Antarctica is gaining volume. However, the scientists stress that this is happening at such a low rate that it does not compensate for the losses on the other side of the continent.

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“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

New Mini Ice Age

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“