Greenlandic MP hits out at Denmark's 'racist' mindset after parliament protest

[Everyone in] my Greenlandic family was getting less opportunities, less pay, less rights Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam MP in the Folketing

- Miranda Bryant

A Greenlandic MP has accused Copenhagen of "cognitive dissonance" after she was ordered to leave the podium in parliament for refusing to translate her speech highlighting human rights abuses against the former Danish colony.

In the speech delivered last month, Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam paid tribute to victims of the so-called Spiral contraceptive scandal, in which Greenlandic women and girls say they were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD) by Danish doctors without their knowledge or consent.

She gave the address in Greenlandic, the official language of the autonomous territory.

According to parliamentary protocol, MPs are permitted to speak Greenlandic in the Folketing, or Danish parliament, but only if they translate their words into Danish immediately afterwards.

This was not something that, in the moment, Høegh-Dam was prepared to do. She said: "I just felt like: 'Why am I even translating myself? I asked for solutions so many times, why am I even translating myself to people who are so racist?'... It was so spontaneous."

Speaking via video link from Nuuk in her parliamentary office in Copenhagen, the 28-year-old politician said many Danish people were ignorant of how strongly influenced by their colonial history they were, even though many identified as liberal advocates of human rights.