Toronto (Canada), Oct 29 (EFE).- Canada must criminally punish the growing denialism that rejects the abuses that indigenous children suffered for generations in the country’s residential schools, and where thousands of minors died, according to a report that was released to be known this Tuesday.
The document “Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Unlocated Indigenous Children and Unmarked Graves in Canada” includes 42 “legal, moral and ethical” recommendations for the Canadian government.
Following its publication, Canada’s Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, stated that the Executive will study the conclusions and recommendations before taking action.
In 2022, the Canadian government appointed Kimberly Murray to produce a report proposing measures that “ensure the respect and culturally appropriate treatment of unmarked graves and child burials associated with former residential schools.”
Murray’s appointment and his report follow the discovery in 2021 of 215 possible unmarked graves on the grounds of a former school residence where Indigenous children were forcibly interned for more than a century.
The discovery of the possible tombs by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc indigenous people, a group from the province of British Columbia, was the first of similar discoveries throughout the country.
So far, nearly 2,000 possible graves have been identified on the grounds of former school residences, which were boarding schools created by Canada at the end of the 19th century and managed mostly by Christian religious orders to assimilate the indigenous population.
In these centers, where some 150,000 people passed through, children suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Officially, about 4,100 children died during detention, although Murray and other researchers have said the real number is much higher.
In 2022, Pope Francis traveled to Canada to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in boarding schools.
The Canadian government had apologized five years earlier for the establishment of the residential schools and the treatment suffered by indigenous people, but has until now refused to provide records demanded by indigenous Canadians to fully understand what happened.
(c) EFE Agency
