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from the well-intentioned-but-oh-so-wrong dept.
In 1951, Denmark had resolved to improve living conditions in Greenland, its Arctic colony. Many people still made a living by hunting seal, only a small percentage spoke Danish, and tuberculosis was widespread.
The best way to modernise the island was to create a new type of Greenlander, the Danish authorities decided, so they sent out telegrams to priests and headteachers asking them to identify intelligent children between the ages of six and 10. The plan - formed with the help of the charity Save the Children Denmark - was to send them to foster families in Denmark so they could be re-educated as "little Danes".
Denmark, the colonial master over Greenland, decided to remove a group of 22 intelligent Inuit children from their families and relocate them to Denmark for re-education. The children were first quarantined and then placed in foster families. The next year part of them were returned to Greenland but they were placed instead of their homes to an orphanage where they were not allowed to use their mother tongue. Instead of becoming some new wonderful breed of citizens many of the subjects became alcoholics and died young.
[A female reporter looking at this event] received a letter from the Danish Red Cross in 1998 in which it said it "regretted" its role in the episode.
Finally, in 2009, Save the Children Denmark apologised too. But an internal investigation showed that some of the documents detailing the organisation's involvement have disappeared - Save the Children admits they could have been deliberately destroyed.
"When we look at what happened, it was a clear violation of children's fundamental rights. There's hardly a rule that hasn't been broken here," says Mimi Jacobsen, secretary general of Save the Children Denmark. "Their well-being was set aside in favour of a project. They meant well, but it all went terribly wrong. I suppose the thinking at the time was that they wanted to educate and improve Greenlanders to give them a better future."
The Danish Government has not yet apologized for this experiment. Greenland now has it's own parliament which decides upon and administers internal matters, but Denmark retains control over constitutional affairs, foreign relations and defence.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Thursday June 11 2015, @11:14AM
No, sir, it has got less to do with Germans and more to do with European superiority complex that still abounds in most of Europe. In fact, Germany is one of the places where national shame over Nazi past has reduced this. Places like France, Sweden and Czech Republic are much worse (today).
For example, here is the 'feminist utopia' Sweden:
"But as it emerged many years later, Scandinavian authorities at least
had not abandoned an interest in the theory—and practice—of 'racial
hygiene' . Between 1934 and 1976 sterilization programmes were pursued
in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, in each case under the auspices and
with the knowledge of Social Democratic governments. In these years
some 6,000 Danes, 40,000 Norwegians and 60,000 Swedes (90 percent of
them women) were sterilized for 'hygienic' purposes: 'to improve the
population'. The intellectual driving force behind these
programmes—the Institute of Racial Biology—at the the University of
Uppsala in Sweden—had been set up in 1921, at the peak of the fashion
for the subject. It was not dismantled until fifty-five year, later." [1]
1. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (http://www.amazon.in/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/0143037757)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by schad on Thursday June 11 2015, @11:51AM
The horrors of history don't come from nowhere. The persecution of various minority groups had been going on in Europe for hundreds or even thousands of years before Hitler was born. It never rose to the level of the Holocaust, but it's what allowed the Holocaust to happen. And, unfortunately, not all of that attitude died with Hitler, as demonstrated by stuff like this.
It's not just the Europeans, though. This is going on all over the world. It has been for thousands of years. And for most of that time, authoritarian rulers have exploited those tensions to keep themselves in power. Even the rationalization of "It's for their own good" isn't terribly new. The people who set up schools exactly like this in the US back in the 18th and 19th c. genuinely believed that they were helping the "savages" by bringing them Western education and Christian morals. The Romans truly thought that you were better off as a Roman slave than as a free "barbarian." It's an easy story to sell because it speaks to the innate sense of superiority that we all have, the idea that our culture (or religion or skin color or...) is the best one and that everyone would be better off if they joined it.
Like I said, it's been happening for thousands of years. And I wish I could say otherwise, but I suspect it'll continue happening for thousands more.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday June 12 2015, @01:20PM
You shouldn't be too smug though. The U.S. has had it's share of abuses as well, including native relocation, Indian schools, and eugenics. The last time it was suggested was when Newt Gingrich suggested taking poor kids from their parents to raise them with more middle class values. That was in the 1980's.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday June 12 2015, @07:26PM
I am not from US.