25 unpleasant facts about different countries that their residents would prefer to forget about

There is no country without sin. And no one has a clean slate. There are many unpleasant secrets hidden in the past and present of any state. It is always unpleasant to talk about them, but the recognition of these unattractive facts is the first step to solving problems.

During the Francoist regime, many single mothers were told that their newborn children were dead. But the bodies of the children were not given to them, and the live baby was actually given to a married couple. Many years later, the graves of many of these supposedly deceased babies turned out to be empty. This was done with the absolute assistance of the Catholic Church.

Alan Turing, who helped crack the Nazi Enigma code, was arrested for being gay and chemically castrated by the government he helped many years ago. He was banned from visiting the USA, which greatly affected his career. He committed suicide in 1954.

For a long time in Italy, a rapist could marry his victim to avoid prosecution (this practice was called "matrimonio riparatore", marriage by violence). Women were pressured to agree to the marriage in order to avoid public shame. Franca Viola in 1948 became the first woman who refused to marry her rapist, but this practice was abolished by law only in 1981.

Sweden has long treated the indigenous Sami in northern Sweden as second-class citizens. Back in the 1970s, Sami children were still forcibly taken from their Sami parents. They were adopted by Swedish parents to "make them Swedes."

Norway suppressed the Sami for many years and forcibly assimilated them in order to "fit into Norwegian culture." Racism towards the Sami exists to this day.

Poland is officially recognized as the most homophobic country in the European Union.

Almost everything connected with the indigenous peoples — the aborigines of Australia - and the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands is a dark page in the history of the country. This is recognized by many Australians.

Violence against women is very common in Turkey. And the first thing anyone who finds out about the rape asks is: what was she wearing?, what is she doing there so late? In other words, blaming victims of violence in the country is flourishing.

Spain ranks second after Cambodia in missing persons cases that have never been solved. There is even a government website dedicated to the search for mass graves in the country.

Few people remember that the fascist dictatorship existed in Austria four years before the Anschluss.

Forced sterilization of mentally retarded people was commonplace until the early 2000s. There has been a law requiring consent since 2001, but many suspect that forced sterilization still applies.

Portugal has a huge problem with domestic violence, including the murder of women and child abuse. The strict Catholic patriarchate reigned here until 1974, so it still hovers in the older generations and seeps to their descendants. Most offenders receive a lenient sentence, because many courts still have judges of the old school.

The Dutch collaborated massively with the Nazis during the Second World War: they denounced hidden Jews, participated in the Nazi police forces. The Dutch Railway Company (NS) transported Jews, Sinti and Roma to German camps, and Royal Dutch Shell itself informed the Nazis about the deportation of its Jewish employees.

Ireland was under the full control of the Catholic Church until the 2000s. Its constitution was drawn up with the approval of the church and still states that a woman's place is home. At the same time, the church got away with protecting pedophile priests, well-known in the country. The Mother and Child Houses are not so well known. Unmarried mothers were brought here, their children were taken away from them. The children either died or were illegally adopted by Irish and American families.

Regional languages in France have been persistently replaced by French since 1789. As a result, today there are only a few of them — mostly those that are not understandable to a native French speaker, for example, Breton, Basque, Corsican, Alsatian, Franco-Provencal, etc. However, more than 90% of the regional languages of France are already dead.

The war against colonized Algeria was associated with numerous war crimes and torture. Many veterans admitted that they felt ashamed for their participation in it.

Lithuania ranks first in the world suicide ranking. One out of 4,000 Lithuanians ends up taking his own life.

King Edward VIII sympathized with the Nazis. He and his wife visited Germany in the 30s to have lunch with Hitler and inspect the SS troops. They say in the 60s he told a friend: "I never thought Hitler was such a bad guy."

A few years ago, there was a scandal with a pediatrician who conducted extremely painful medical experiments on children he was supposed to treat. For example, he attached a metal rod to the child's back and inserted screws into his spine to "fix" scoliosis or something similar.

He experimented with bones that, in his opinion, did not grow properly. He mainly targeted poor families or families with children with rare diseases because he believed they would not or would not be able to question his methods. Around the same time, it was discovered that several shelters were drugging children and tying them to their beds so that they would be obedient.

In Ireland, homosexuality was decriminalized only in 1993, after a 16-year litigation that ended in the European Court of Human Rights in 1988. It took another 5 years to execute the court's decision.

The treatment of Greenlanders in Denmark was absolutely appalling. They were treated as 2nd-class citizens, and they had almost no right to vote. Until now, higher education in Greenland is conducted in Danish, not in Greenlandic.

The 1980-1983 years were very dark for Turkey — a paranoid nationalist military junta coupled with guerrilla warfare in rural areas and mass political repression. Add to this torture in military prisons, kangaroo courts and state-funded killings.

Greece is the only country in Europe where you can legally live under Sharia law.

"Trattativa stato mafia", also known as "negotiations between the state and the mafia" in 1993 and 1994 — a shameful page in the history of the Italian state. In fact, these were secret negotiations between very high statesmen and the leaders of the Sicilian mafia at the end of the "massacre season", when the mafia carried out literal terrorist attacks on cities. The state has humiliated itself to the point that it has sat down with murderers at a common table — that's how citizens think about it.