Shame is on Canada not China
If the definition of genocide is still not clear to some, the human remains found in unmarked graves near three residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada tells a heartrending story of how such an iniquity was committed in a country which always likes to consider itself an advocate of human rights.
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to live in state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of these children died there of diseases or other causes.
About three-fourths of the 130 such residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by the Presbyterian, Anglican and the United Church of Canada, which today is the largest Protestant denomination in the country.
As the Canadian government has acknowledged, physical and sexual abuse were rampant in these residential schools, with students beaten for speaking their own native languages.
The remains discovered in unmarked graves on the sites of the three residential schools are clearly only the tip of an iceberg. A thorough investigation is needed to find out what happened to all the Indigenous children who were forced to go to such schools and whether the Canadian government, the Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and the United churches did anything to cover up the atrocities.
The Canadian Government destroyed 15 tons of paper documents related to the residential school system between 1936 and 1944, including 200,000 Indian affairs files, according to a report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
There is more than enough reason for Indigenous people and all Canadian people to feel angry with their government and ask for the truth about what these schools did to the Indigenous children.
The fact that Indigenous people have long been misrepresented and the history of such residential schools has been omitted in Canadian history textbook suggests that the ghost of racism and white supremacism still haunts Canada.
It is probably because of what has happened to these poor children that some politicians in Canada have imagined that China must have done the same to the Uygurs and the other ethnic groups in its Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
What they can never have imaged is the fact that China has never had a policy or done anything to assimilate other ethnic groups into the culture of the Han. Instead, its policy shows enough respect to the development of the various other ethnic groups’ own cultures. Preferential policies have even been implemented to facilitate the development of the unique culture of some ethnic groups.
As far as racial equality is concerned, Canada and the United States with their houses in shameful disorder are not in a position to point an accusing finger at China, which has set a good example for them to learn from.