Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 82

January 2006

Hingitaq 53 and Others v. Denmark (dec.) - 18584/04

Decision 12.1.2006 [Section I]

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1

Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1

Deprivation of property

Forced relocation of members of the Inughuit tribe on Greenland in the 1950s and related compensation award: inadmissible

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for home

Forced relocation of members of the Inughuit tribe on Greenland in the 1950s: inadmissible

Facts: The applicants are over 400 individuals from the Thule District in Greenland, and Hingitaq 53, a group that represented the interests of relocated Inughuit (the Thule Tribe) and their descendants in a legal action against the Danish Government. The Thule District was incorporated into the Danish colonial area in Greenland in 1921. After World War II Denmark and the USA signed a treaty on the defence of Greenland, which was approved by the Danish Parliament in 1951. Consequently, an American air base was established amidst the applicants’ hunting areas and in the vicinity of the applicants’ native village site, Uummannaq (then called Thule). As part of the base an airstrip was built, together with housing and facilities intended to accommodate 4,000 people. In 1953 the US Government requested permission to expand the base to cover the whole Dundas Peninsula. The request was granted, with the consequence that the Thule Tribe was evicted and had to settle outside the defence area. Within days, twenty‑six Inuit families left Uummannaq, leaving behind their houses, a hospital, a school, a radio station, warehouses, a church and a graveyard. Most of the families chose to move to Qaanaaq, more than 100 km north of Uummannaq, where they lived in tents until substitute housing was built for them.

In 1953 a new Danish Constitution was passed which extended to all parts of the Danish Kingdom, including Greenland, which thus became an integral part of Denmark. In 1954 the United Nations General Assembly approved the constitutional integration of Greenland into the Danish Realm and deleted Greenland from the list of non-self-governing territories. In 1959 and 1960 the Thule Tribe requested the Ministry for Greenland to grant compensation for the relocation of the tribe but never received a decision. In 1979 home rule was introduced in Greenland, a scheme which left most of the important decision‑making, excluding the areas of foreign policy and defence, to the Home Rule Government. In 1985 the Thule Tribe lodged a fresh claim for compensation. This eventually led, among other things, to the building of new houses instead of the original houses from the 1950s, and to an agreement between the Danish Government and the Home Rule Government to improve the conditions for the Thule municipality in order to remedy the inconveniences resulting from the existence of the military base. The plan was implemented in the period 1985-1986 and in 1986 the US and Denmark entered into an agreement reducing the area of the base to almost half its original size. In 1987 the Minister of Justice set up a review committee to submit a report establishing the facts of the Thule Tribe’s relocation in 1953. In 1997 the Danish Government agreed to donate a substantial amount of money towards the cost of a new airport in Thule. In 1999 the Danish Prime Minister formally apologised to the applicants for the forced relocation of the Inughuit in 1953.

In the meantime, in 1996, the applicants brought a case against the Prime Minister’s Office before a High Court, seeking declarations that they h