BERLIN, June 17 (Xinhua) -- The discovery of a mass grave of indigenous children in Canada has testified to the oppression of indigenous people, the German newspaper Junge Welt has reported.
At the end of May, the remains of 215 indigenous children were found on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, a former Canadian boarding school to which indigenous children were forcefully sent to be integrated with the European colonialists.
Between 1831 and 1996, Canada's residential school system forcibly separated about 150,000 children from their homes, with many subjected to abuse, rape, and malnutrition. Most schools were run by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government.
The German newspaper noted that in 2015, the Canadian government reacted to public criticism and pressure and set up a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission." However, the Canadian government has since litigated against compensation claims by survivors.
Noting that the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 explicitly defined in Article II the "forcible transfer of children of the (threatened) group to another group" as one of the acts of genocide, the article said that neither Canada nor the United States has closed their re-education institutions.
The article added that there are no official figures from the U.S. side on such residential schools there and the U.S. government has so far not allowed a similar process of clarification as in Canada.
The recent discovery of the children's bodies "confirmed the consistent experience of the American Indian Movement and the First Nations that their situation on both sides of the colonial border was equally precarious," the article said. Enditem