(Bloomberg) -- Hedvig Frederiksen was 14 years old when her Danish headmistress sent the girls from her class to a hospital in Paamiut in Southwestern Greenland.

Sitting anxiously in the waiting room, Frederiksen had no idea why she was there. One by one her classmates’ names were called, and one by one they returned from the examination room crying and clutching their bellies.

She remembers little about her own turn in the room; just the excruciating pain that followed, longing for her parents, and the silence in the girls’ dormitory that night in 1974. Frederiksen now knows she had been fitted with an intrauterine device, commonly known as a coil, a procedure carried out on thousands of Inuit girls by the Danish government to curb population growth in its former colony.

Now 63, Frederiksen only recently began to talk about what happened to her.

“It was very traumatic. I was just a kid; I wasn’t sexually active. I didn’t know what the word coil meant, or what it was,” Frederiksen said. Even today, many victims still feel shame and guilt about the procedures, she said.

Frederiksen is one of 143 women who are suing the Danish state, claiming that for decades it violated the Inuit women’s human rights through its so-called family planning efforts. In a lawsuit filed Monday, they are seeking compensation of 300,000 kroner ($43,700) each — a total of $6.2 million — but for the Danish state there could be much more at stake.

The scandal is the latest in a string of revelations of past misconduct by Danes in Greenland that are gaining prominence at a time when the autonomous territory is inching towards full independence and increasingly aware of the attention it’s attracting as a geopolitical asset.

“It’s crucial that Denmark takes responsibility,” said Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament for Inuit Ataqatigiit. “A complete political rejection of these cases would be very harmful to the relationship between Greenland and Denmark.”

While Greenland’s status as a Danish colony officially ended in 1953, Copenhagen still controlled the island’s health-care system until 1991. To this day, Denmark oversees some affairs, including foreign policy and security, in the Arctic territory, which has a population of just 57,000.

“It’s a tragic matter, and we must get to the bottom of what happened, which is why a team of researchers is currently conducting an independent and impartial investigation,” Sophie Løhde, Denmark’s minister of health, said in an emailed response to questions.

No Consent

In the 146-page lawsuit, Inuit women recount how as teenagers, but some as young as 12, they were fitted with a coil by Danish doctors. Girls were typically sent to hospital by their school, rarely told why, and never gave consent. The experiences, and the high-risk IUD used at the time, left girls with traumatic memories as well as physical scars for life. Many became permanently infertile.

An investigation by Danish broadcaster DR found that in the late 1960s, about 4,500 of the 9,000 fertile women in Greenland were fitted with IUDs by Danish doctors. Birth rates more than halved.

Like many Greenlandic children from rural areas, Holga Platou was sent at 13 years old to complete school in the nearest town. Shortly after arriving in Maniitsoq in Western Greenland she was sent to the doctor during school hours. Now 63, Platou, who comes from a family of 10 siblings, tried for a baby for many years with her lifelong partner, but was never able to get pregnant after dealing with complications from the coil.

“I still remember the doctor’s equipment. It was cold. It really hurt. I was in a lot of pain afterward,” said Platou. 

Platou never agreed to have a coil, but her traditional Greenlandic upbringing had taught her that authorities weren’t to be questioned.

For decades, Frederiksen and Platou kept quiet about what had happened. Girls across Greenland were doing the same. Only in 2017, when a woman called Naja Lyberth shared her story on Facebook, did Inuit women start talking. It still took five years for the scandal to gain global attention, following an investigation by the Danish broadcaster.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has recognized that “serious crimes and missteps” were committed by Danes in Greenland, but said she will await an investigation commissioned by her government before drawing conclusions. Survivors fear it will drag out for years and that many of them, who are now in their 70s and 80s, won’t live to see the outcome. 

Third Lawsuit

The coil lawsuit is the third that human rights lawyer Mads Pramming has brought on behalf of Greenlanders. In the first case, the Danish government in 2022 apologized and paid compensation to six Inuit who were separated from their families in the early 1950s, as part of a failed experiment to build a Danish-speaking elite in Greenland.

In a lawsuit that followed the same year, Denmark has so far not been as forthcoming. Some 26 plaintiffs are challenging legislation that denied children of unwed Greenlandic mothers the right to know or inherit from their fathers up until the 1960s and 1970s, a right that was given to Danish children decades earlier. Danes enforced discrimination largely because of a view that Greenlandic people were immature and uncivilized, an investigation commissioned by the Danish government found.

The case could be heard in court as soon as this year, after Denmark rejected their claim.

What the cases have in common is that the Danish state actively violated human rights for its own economic or practical benefit, said Pramming. He’s working on a fourth case over adoptions of Greenlandic children.

Geopolitical Power

The legal battles reflect a new momentum for Greenlanders, who — inspired by international movements such as Black Lives Matter, able to connect for the first time through the emergence of social media, and empowered by the knowledge of their growing geopolitical importance — now feel in a position to confront past and present injustices.

The war in Ukraine has dramatically increased the territory’s military value to the US and NATO, given its strategic location between the Arctic and the North Atlantic, while vast stores of critical minerals and fossil fuels have drawn interest from major powers including Russia and China.

In 2019, enticed by the economic and military prospects, former President Donald Trump confirmed the US had offered to buy Greenland. After being rebuffed, Trump then approved millions of dollars in aid for economic development. 

“Greenland is a geological goldmine, we’re extremely important strategically for the West. We know now we are important,” said Qivioq Løvstrøm, a history lecturer at the University of Greenland and chair of the Human Rights Council of Greenland.

For victims of the coil campaign, it’s first and foremost equality within the commonwealth that they are seeking. They say that can only happen if Denmark recognizes its wrongdoing.

“It is said that Greenland became an equal part of Denmark when the colonial rule ended. No, we didn’t. Denmark colonized our bodies,” said Lyberth, who was 14 years old when she had an IUD inserted without her consent in 1976, along with the other girls in her class in Maniitsoq.

She repressed the experience for decades, until the menopause triggered many of the same painful symptoms she had after getting the coil and inspired her to speak out. Today, Lyberth has become the front figure for the coil campaign’s many victims.

“I would like the Danish government to recognize us as equal citizens within the commonwealth, and that we have human rights.”

--With assistance from Danielle Bochove, Christian Wienberg and Jeremy Diamond.

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