Stockholm - After years of denial, the Swedish government yesterday began moves to compensate thousands of citizens sterilised in a grim social experiment in eugenics which lasted more than 40 years. The government's social affairs ministry announced it would approve payments of up to $21,500 to each surviving victim of the 1934-76 sterilisation programme.
The revelation that socially liberal Sweden engaged in a programme different only in scale to that of Nazi Germany, and that the policy was endorsed by successive Social Democratic governments, has shocked the country.