Genocide of Children: Hide your head in shame Canada

 

They say people living in glass houses should not throw stones. Canada has been one of the staunchest proponents of unsubstantiated allegations against Sri Lanka, simply because a handful of LTTE lobbyists have learnt the art of influencing them through means only they would know &unlikely to admit. In accusing Sri Lanka of genocide and what not, we would expect the accusers to be squeaky clean. Not so…. daily skeletons (pun intended) are coming out of graves of children killed. These are not just one or two incidents but systematic & planned killings & abuse of indigenous children. It certainly dampens the fictitious image Canada tries to portray itself and should remind Canada without cleaning its own backyard, Canada should not try to clean others. It should also wake Canada up to some ground realities of molly-cuddling with terrorists also.

 

Canada is a created country. Canada was established in 1867. Canada’s history is therefore just 154years. That is less than the years the Portuguese ruled parts of Sri Lanka!

Though the whites took claim over Canada, Canada was inhabited by indigenous people for over 12,000 years.

 

Canada that is demanding Sri Lanka remove its penal codes, internal laws etc continues the 1876 passed Indian Act. The Act allows the Canadian government to define who an ‘Indian’ is, after which you gain ‘Status’. Canada that boasts about equality still decides who they call an ‘Indian’ and gives status to and linked to the ‘rights’ they enjoy ! The Indian Act does not include the Metis & Inuit people, who are known as ‘non-Status Indians’ and yes, Canada dictates how Sri Lanka treats its ‘minorities’.

The Canada that accuses Sri Lanka of disenfranchising the Indian Tamils imported by colonials, have denied Status Indians their legal & ancestral identities via Canada’s Indian Act! First Nations women lost their Indian Status if they married a non-Status man Their children suffered too! The Indian Act also denied First Nations women from voting & running for elections. But Canada has no problem with LTTE proxies running for elections! Status Indians could vote only in 1960! Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world’s first female PM in 1960!

 

The Canada that demands rehabilitated LTTE be inducted into the armed forces & police, denies Inuits & Metis women serving the Canadian armed forces, getting college & university degrees or becoming a professional (doctor/lawyer) How many know what happened to Indigenous Tommy Prince, who inspite becoming a decorated Canadian war hero, faced systematic racism after returning to his ‘home’. Not only was he not able to vote but he was not treated like the other white veterans. Shocking!

In their own habitat they were declared ‘citizens’ only in 1951, in their homeland their land was usurped and made to live on ‘reserved’ land and until early 1900s they had to even get permission to leave these areas with passes. These reserve areas still exist & are governed by the Indian Act – no wonder Canada is supporting LTTE to usurp land & create a bogus homeland!

 

The Residential School system to ‘solve’ the Indian problem and force indigenous to assimilate was another example of the ‘white man’s burden’ having usurped and stolen lands belonging to others and then determining who rules & on whose terms! These schools were operational from 1600s far before Canada per se was created! The Residential School in Saskatchewan closed only in 1996.

Here’s how Canada ASSIMILATED indigenous Indians

  • Children between 4-16years were forcibly removed from their families & communities & segregated by gender
  • Children were malnourished, made vulnerable to diseases
  • Children were sexually abused & subject to various experimental brain tests
  • These schools remain federally funded (not provincially) and are under-funded & not given same care as others.
  • Indigenous systems of healing was criminalized and prohibited by Amendments to the Indian Act in late 19th& 20th

Canada that demands Truth & Reconciliation in Sri Lanka must answer to whether the problems of the indigenous people of Canada has been solved after Canada’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission as well as the National inquiry into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women???

Canada’s TRC declared the indigenous school system ‘cultural genocide’. So what has Canada done to reverse this 6 years after? TRC commissioners Murray Sinclair, Wilton Littlechild and Marie Wilson are not very happy.

Canada that demands transparency from Sri Lanka was caught hiding evidence https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/1/6/canada-accused-of-hiding-child-abuse-evidenceBut evidence keeps popping up https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-01/childrens-bodies-kamloops-indian-residential-school-trudeau/100180332which is why we refuse to fall prey to the LTTE funded global propaganda accusing Sri Lanka of killing 40,000 people and we wish to instead simply ask those making the allegations to name these 40,000 dead, give some form of identity, prove where they lived, show the police complaints filed by their families. Without any of these and no skeletons even, the Sri Lanka’s National Army cannot be accused of killing people who did not exist. Of course the Sri Lankan Armed Forces do not have to apologize for killing LTTE during hostilities.

 

Between 1836 and 1996, Canada operated 139 residential schools in Canada. An estimated 6000 children are said to have died in these schools. The TRC requested $1.5M to find mass graves at residential schools but the federal government denied the money in 2009 – Oh the very year LTTE was defeated by Sri Lanka! Why don’t the LTTE Diaspora holding positions in Canada question the Canadian government and fight for truth & justice for Canadian Indians?

 

The indigenous people living in the country called Canada have suffered much. The irony and the issue is that Canada preaches to other countries of the world while hiding and not attempting to remove the racism, segregations and other stigma that aboriginals continue to suffer from. We find this highly hypocritical given that Canada uses its envoys and international officials to issue highly offensive statements to less powerful nations on how they should govern their countries when Canada is doing the opposite back home!

 

We can only ask Canada to take out its TRC report and look at how justice can be given to the indigenous natives before trying to create separate homelands in other countries for terrorists and their supporters living in Canada, holding Canadian passports & unlikely to ever live in a ‘Eelam homeland’, Canada wants to help create for them. But Canada is more than welcome to help create Eelam in Canada given that more Canadian Tamils demand Eelam living in Canada than the handful of isolated voices heard elsewhere.

 

 

 

Shenali D Waduge

 

 

 

 

 

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