Unmarkedgraves,infantbodiesandstoriesuntold:howCanadalosesitsidyllicvision_Nations

原标题：Unmarked graves, infant bodies and stories untold: how Canada loses its idyllic vision

Canada’s records of human rights abuse of Indigenous people

The Lower Kootenay Band, a First Nations community in western Canada, announced on June 30, 2021 that 182 human remainshad been detected by ground-penetrating radar (GPR) at St Eugene’s Mission residential school for Indigenous children in British Columbia.

It is the third discovery of unmarked graves and human remains at the site of former residential schools for Indigenous children since late May this year, when Roseanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation, said in a news release that unmarked burials of 215 studentswere discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, coming after which, Cadmus Delorme, Chief of the Cowessess First Nation, announced on June 24 the discovery of 751 unmarked gravesat the site of a former Catholic residential school in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province.

The shocking and heart-breaking news revealed a long and dark history of the residential school system operated on Indigenous children in the North America which has long been neglected.

‘A policy of cultural genocide’

Can

ada’s National Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated in a 2015 report titled “What We Have Learned”.

The boarding school policy on-going for more than a century in North America has left generations of Indigenous people with great trauma and in deep wound. Canada’s National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, launched in 2008 to investigate the residential schools, stated in a 2015 report titled “What We Have Learned” that during the Roman Catholic residential schools first founding in the 1860s to the late 1990s, “at least 150,000 First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students passed through the system.”

“The history of residential schools presented in this report commenced by placing the schools in the broader history of the global European colonization of Indigenous peoples and their lands,” the report goes, “residential schooling was only a part of the colonization of Aboriginal people. The policy of colonization suppressed Aboriginal culture and languages, disrupted Aboriginal government, destroyed Aboriginal economies, and confined Aboriginal people to marginal and often unproductive land.”

It is estimated in the report that about 4,100 Indigenous children taken from their families across the country went missing from the school.“That policy was dedicated to eliminating Aboriginal peoples as distinct political and cultural entities and must be described for what it was: a policy of cultural genocide,” the report defined.

Although the residential schools have been closed, the racial discrimination targeting Indigenous peoples in Canada is still a living fact. According to statistics, Indigenous peoples are 58% more likely to be targeted by criminal actsthan non-Indigenous peoples. Indigenous women are 16 times more likely to be murdered or missingthan Caucasian women. Between 1980 and 2015, several thousand Indigenous women were murdered or went missing. However, no solid steps except for single words of apology from the government are yet made to seek the truth.

Same accusation, but wrong country to blame

As Canada joins the US, the UK and Australia to round on China for its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, those countries appearing as ‘human rights defenders’ remain conspicuously quiet about such evidenced crimes of human rights abuse in Canada. Meantime in June, illegal public hearings were held by the so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” set up by the West to assess China’s abuse of human rights and trace evidence of committing “genocide” in Xinjiang, raising the same accusations of crimes that not China, but themselves had been proven committed to the Indigenous people.

Fact is that “the education and training in Xinjiang is a social governance measure taken by the government, in accordance with the law, to protect the lives and basic civil rights of citizens,” stated in China’s white paper titled “Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang” issued in 2019.

Employment in Xinjiang, white paper “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang”, released in 2020

With tremendous efforts taken by the Chinese government, according to a more recent white paper titled “Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang” released in 2020, “from 2014 to 2019, the total number of people employed in Xinjiang rose from 11.35 million to 13.3 million, an increase of 17.2 percent…In 2019, there were 453,800 full-time students studying at universities and colleges (an increase of 146,200 over 2014), and 1.84 million students studying at secondary schools (an increase of 147,600 over 2014).” By the end of 2020, all of Xinjiang's 3.089 million poor people, 3,666 poverty-stricken villages and all 32 impoverished counties have been lifted out of poverty.

Population growth of China, according to data of the seventh national population census, released in 2021

The main data of the Seventh National Population Census released in May, 2021 shows that compared with 2010, the national population was 1,411.78 million persons, increased by 5.38%, among which the population of the Han ethnic group grew by 4.93%, that of the ethnic minorities increased by 10.26%, while the population of the Uyghur ethnic group in Xinjiang grew by 16.2%.

“Indeed, this so-called ‘Uyghur Tribunal’ has nothing to do with law. It is a pure anti-China farce,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded during a regular press conference on June 8, “no matter how anti-China forces rack their brains to put on anti-China farces, China, including its Xinjiang region, will enjoy greater development and there will be more and more voices in the world calling for an objective and just view of Xinjiang.”

To contribute Chinese wisdom to global human rights governance

Like Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out in the speech at a ceremony marking the centenary of the Communist Party of China on July 1, 2021, “peace, concord, and harmony are ideas the Chinese nation has pursued and carried forward for more than 5,000 years. The Chinese nation does not carry aggressive or hegemonic traits in its genes.”

Speech by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, at a grand gathering celebrating CPC centenary, July 1, 2021

Earlier last month, China’s State Council Information Office issued a white paper titled “The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection – A 100-Year Quest”, which gives a comprehensive and systematic introduction of the CPC’s philosophy and practices in respecting and protecting human rights.

“Over the past 100 years, the CPC has taken a people-centered approach, and applied the principle of universality of human rights to China’s national conditions,” Zhao said during a regular press conference in late June, “I'd like to stress that China’s human rights cause is consistent with our national conditions, serves our people and has achieved remarkable progress.”

“The CPC will continue to lead the Chinese people to follow the path of peaceful development, and stay committed to promoting common prosperity and safeguarding world peace,” Zhao affirmed, “We will take an active part in international human rights affairs, contribute Chinese wisdom and solutions to global human rights governance, further the world human rights cause, and work with the rest of the world to jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.

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