About 500 people protested in Greenland on the occasion of the opening of the new premises of the American consulate in the center of the capital Nuuk, the local newspaper Sermitsiaq reported on Friday. TASR informs about it according to the report of the DPA agency.
- About five hundred people protested the opening of the US consulate in Nuuk.
- Demonstrators symbolically turned their backs on the new consulate building.
- Greenland Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen refused to participate in the opening ceremony.
- American Ambassador Ken Howery declared that Greenlanders must decide about Greenland.
- The unannounced visit of the American envoy Jeff Landry caused negative reactions in Nuuk.
Greenlandic media reported that protesters turned their backs on the building, which will house the new consulate on three floors, for two minutes on Thursday night. The American embassy moved there from an older and smaller building in the port.
According to local media, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen declined the invitation to open a new consulate. Greenland Radio reported that no parliament representatives were present either.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to take Greenland under his controlin extreme cases also with the use of force. During the opening ceremony of the consulate, US Ambassador to Denmark Ken Howery used diplomatic vocabulary, the Ritzau news agency stated. “The president will no longer consider the use of force,” he stated that “the future of Greenland must be decided by the Greenlanders themselves”.
Some protesters carried banners reading “USA ASU” (“USA STOP”), others chanted “No means no!”. In the past few days, the visit of the US special envoy Jeff Landry also caused a commotion in Nuuk. He arrived without an official invitation and, according to his own words, with the intention of “finding many new friends”. However, it only caused more negative reactions among many Greenlanders, adds DPA.
