Independence In Focus In Greenland Vote, With Trump As Backdrop

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published March 08, 2025 | 10:20 AM

Nuuk, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Mar, 2025) Greenland votes Tuesday in legislative elections following a campaign largely focused on when -- not if -- to cut ties with Denmark without falling into the clutches of the United States.

President Donald Trump's at-times threatening remarks about seizing Greenland have lent fresh momentum to the self-governing territory's independence movement.

Many of the island's 57,000 inhabitants insist they want to be neither American nor Danish -- just Greenlandic.

"Donald Trump has kind of sparked the issue of independence again," University of Greenland political scientist Maria Ackren told AFP.

"It's nothing new for Greenlanders ... But it is giving the Greenlandic decision-makers and politicians momentum now to actually maybe reach some goals that haven't been available lately," she said.

The issue of independence has featured predominantly in the campaign, alongside education, social affairs, fisheries -- which account for 90 percent of the vast Arctic island's exports -- and tourism.

Almost all of the parties represented in parliament support the idea of full sovereignty for the massive ice-covered island, 50 times the size of Denmark yet 100 times less populated.

Clusters of building cranes towering over the capital Nuuk are a sign of Greenland's rapidly modernising society, one that has left some of its mainly Inuit population -- mostly hunters and fishermen -- by the wayside.

While visible on the streets, the social woes are even more glaring in the statistics: Greenland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, more abortions than births and a life expectancy for men under 70 years.