Denmark apologises for taking Greenland children in ‘inhuman’ experiment
- The 22 Inuit victims were separated from their families in 1951 and shipped away to be re-educated as ‘Little Danes’
- The children were never sent back to their relatives and were either adopted by Danish families or sent back to Greenland to be placed in an orphanage
Denmark’s prime minister on Wednesday delivered a face-to-face apology to six living victims of a 1950s social experiment in which 22 Greenlandic children were taken from their families and sent to Denmark to be integrated into Danish society.
The Inuit children were between four and nine years old when they were shipped to Denmark, then the colonial power, in 1951 to try to re-educate them as “little Danes”.
The children were supposed to return to Greenland and be part of a new Danish-speaking elite that would help modernise the Arctic island’s Inuit population.
The experiment was part of a broader effort by Denmark to convince the United Nations that Greenland, a Danish colony until 1953, was an integrated part of Denmark. Denmark and other colonial powers had pledged to work towards decolonisation when joining the world body in 1945.
“Your stories have touched us deeply and this is why Denmark today says the only word that is right to say: sorry,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told an audience, which included the six survivors at a ceremony at the National Museum of Denmark.