RPT - UN Calls Discovery Of Mass Grave Of Indigenous Children In Canada 'Shocking'

UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 09th June, 2021) The United Nations found the discovery of the remains of over 200 indigenous children at a former residential school in Canada shocking, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Sputnik.

"The discovery of 215 bodies of indigenous children near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. is shocking and re-opens painful wounds," the spokesperson said. "These events provide momentum to reinvigorate the implementation of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019)."

The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced last month that a deep scan of the Kamloops Indian Residential School site with ground-penetrating radar confirmed the discovery of 215 children's remains, with some of the deceased being as young as three years old.

According to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, released in 2015, roughly 150,000 aboriginal children were forcibly assimilated through the residential schools, such as Kamloops, from 1883 to 1998, in a process equated to "cultural genocide."

The report discovered that around 3,200 died in the schools, with the greatest number of deaths taking place before 1940. Schools also had high rates of tuberculosis and other health incidences in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with death rates remaining high until the 1950s.