Greenland’s 31 MPs united in their parliamentary chamber on Monday against renewed overtures by the US to take their homeland, which has been part of the Danish kingdom for three centuries.
“We must stand together to protect the Greenland we know,” said Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen in the special session, held a day earlier than planned. Warning that US ambitions for the island “have not changed”, Nielsen urged the island’s 56,000 citizens: “We must stand together to safeguard our self-governance within the framework of the kingdom. [This is] our opportunity to decide our future ourselves and continue our development.”
MPs opened the first day of the new parliamentary session with their usual march through Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, wearing traditional dress.
But this tradition acquired an extra symbolism on Monday as MPs shrugged off -7 temperatures and Washington’s latest effort to turn up the political temperature.
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A Trump-appointed US special envoy to Greenland said at the weekend the administration’s position remained that “total access” to the island was “essential” for US security interests.
“These measures are not provocative – they are preventive,” wrote Jeff Landry, governor of Louisiana, in The New York Times on Saturday. “The era when the Arctic could be treated as remote, static or secondary has passed.”
Landry noted how Greenland’s location already made it of “critical” importance to the US. This was reflected in its early-warning and missile-defence infrastructure there, which he said Washington would expand as part of wider Washington efforts to curtail Chinese and Russian interests and expansion into emerging Arctic shipping routes.
Landry has yet to set foot in Greenland and, after being first invited and then uninvited to the country’s national dogsled championship, the 55-year-old has promised to visit the island in coming weeks. Whether he will be welcome is another matter, given recent street demonstrations and an emotional parliamentary session on Monday.
Nielsen expressed thanks for worldwide support and, without mentioning the Landry intervention, said ongoing high-level talks in Washington was the path forward.
He described as “unacceptable” the mental health cost of lingering uncertainty. His government has launched a survey of the population amid widespread reports of insomnia and anxiety, including among children.
Mariane Paviasen Jensen, an MP for the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party, insisted Greenland was not for sale or transfer but always open for “respectful co-operation”.
She added: “The president of the United States is hurting and jeopardising such a co-operation.”
