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Six people who were part of a failed 1950s social experiment have won compensation from Denmark's government and have received a face-to-face apology from the prime minister.
"What you were subjected to was terrible; it was inhumane, it was unfair, and it was heartless," Mette Frederiksen told the six Inuit Greenlanders at a ceremony in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
They were among 22 Inuit children sent to Denmark from Greenland in 1951 to learn Danish. It was part of a scheme to raise "model" Greenlanders to help bridge Danish and indigenous cultures.
However, the children…
Six Inuit who were snatched from their families in Greenland and taken to Denmark 70 years ago are demanding compensation from Copenhagen for a lost childhood.
In 1951, Denmark took 22 children from its former colony away from their families, promising them a better life and the chance to return to Greenland as part of a new Danish-educated elite.
Six survivors of the 22, now in their 70s, are each demanding €33,600 (£28,200) as compensation in a letter to…
"Denmark's prime minister has apologised to 22 children who were removed from their homes in Greenland in the 1950s in a failed social experiment," says this article from BBC News. These children, from Greenland's indigenous Inuit population, "were taken to Denmark to be re-educated as 'little Danes' who could later return to foster cultural links," according to the article. "But when 16 did return they were put in an orphanage and many did not see their families again. Only six are now alive."
In the 1950s, the Danish government began removing Inuit children in the Danish colony of Greenland from their families and sending them to Denmark in an attempt to re-educate them as “Little Danes” and “modernize” Greenland. This article describes the experiences of those children, one in particular - Helene Thiesen - who is now in her 70s. The children were brought to Denmark, then held in quarantine for a period of a few months, and finally placed into foster families in Denmark. The following year, most of the children were sent back to Greenland, though some were adopted by their Danish…