China urges Canada to tell truth of violations against indigenous people

Ambassador Zhang Jun called for Canada's government to fulfill its responsibility to let the world know the truth of violations against the indigenous people in Canada at the UN's Security Council Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict on Monday.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the UN mandate on children and armed conflict. Zhang, China's permanent representative to the UN, said the protection of children is the responsibility of all states and governments and should be the "top priority" under any circumstances.

"The recently exposed abuse and violence of indigenous children in Canada at boarding schools that led to the loss of over 4,000 lives is shocking and horrific. We cannot let this dark page stay in history books only," said Zhang. "We urge the Government of Canada to earnestly fulfill its responsibility to let the world know the truth, and to give justice to the victims, so as to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies."

On Thursday, weeks after the remains of215 childrenwere found in unmarked graves on the grounds of a former Indian residential school in British Columbia, another remains of as many as 751 people, mainly indigenous children, were discovered at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan.

According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), a body mandated to tell Canadians about the truth of residential schools, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society from the 19th century until the 1970s.

They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused without any contact with their parents, and thousands are said to have died, which the TRC called a "cultural genocide".

Some former students at the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated.

The commission estimated that about 4,100 children went missing nationwide from the schools. But an indigenous former judge who led the commission, Murray Sinclair, said this month that he now believed the number was "well beyond 10,000".