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Demonstrators wearing orange in solidarity with survivors of residential schools gather in front of Parliament Hill on Canada Day in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, July 1, 2021. /Getty
Hundreds of protesters in Canada's capital called on Saturday for a probe into a boarding school system for indigenous children, as outrage built after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at several of the facilities.
Until the 1990s, some 150,000 indigenous, Inuit and Metis youths were forcibly enrolled in the schools, where students were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers who stripped them of their culture and language.
"Indigenous Peoples need truth and justice," MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq wrote on Instagram.
"That means a special prosecutor and a fully-funded independent investigation, with international observers present, into Canada's crimes against Indigenous Peoples," she added, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Justice Minister David Lametti "to stop making excuses" and launch a probe.
Shoes placed on the steps of the Manitoba Legislature to honor hundreds of children recently discovered in unmarked graves on the sites of several former residential schools across Canada near the now toppled statue of Queen Victoria in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, July 2, 2021. /Getty
The demonstrators gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa after two lawmakers from the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) called for a protest.
The NDP called on Trudeau's government in early July to appoint a special prosecutor to lead an independent investigation into the country's painful history of residential schools for indigenous children.
"People have been shocked by the number of graves that have been found... These are not accidents; these are not tragedies; they represent a policy that was about the destruction of a people," NDP lawmaker Charlie Angus told public broadcaster CBC.
Since late May, more than 1,000 unmarked graves were found near former residential schools -- discoveries that have outraged the country.
More than 4,000 died of disease and neglect in the schools, according to a commission of inquiry that concluded Canada had committed "cultural genocide."
Read more:
Canada's cultural genocide of indigenous people
China calls for investigations of genocides in western countries
Source(s): AFP
The demonstrators gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa after two lawmakers from the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) called for a protest.
The NDP called on Trudeau's government in early July to appoint a special prosecutor to lead an independent investigation into the country's painful history of residential schools for indigenous children.
"People have been shocked by the number of graves that have been found... These are not accidents; these are not tragedies; they represent a policy that was about the destruction of a people," NDP lawmaker Charlie Angus told public broadcaster CBC.
Since late May, more than 1,000 unmarked graves were found near former residential schools -- discoveries that have outraged the country.
More than 4,000 died of disease and neglect in the schools, according to a commission of inquiry that concluded Canada had committed "cultural genocide."
Read more:
Canada's cultural genocide of indigenous people
China calls for investigations of genocides in western countries
Source(s): AFP
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