Canada must be held accountable over Indigenous children, unmarked graves: Baghaei
Tehran - BORNA - In a statement published on his X account on the occasion of September 30—marked in Canada as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation—Baghaei stressed that genuine reconciliation cannot be achieved through political platitudes while fundamental questions surrounding the residential school system remain unanswered.
"The bitter fate of Canada's Indigenous children continues to haunt the global conscience; children who were forcibly separated from their families, stripped of their names, languages, and identities, and subjected to a system of forced assimilation—a system where many were brutally abused, and many died far from home and were buried in unmarked graves," Baghaei wrote.
He noted that while September 30 was designated as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation ostensibly to honor the survivors of residential schools and commemorate the innocent pupils who never returned home, reconciliation cannot be reduced merely to symbolic commemorations.
"Reconciliation cannot be diminished to a single day of commemoration or political formalities. As long as serious questions regarding residential schools remain unanswered and the nature and conduct of these institutions remain shrouded in ambiguity, reconciliation will remain incomplete," the spokesman said.
Baghaei added: "The pain and suffering of Indigenous children is not a subject for culture wars; rather, it is a matter of truth and accountability. Answering the questions surrounding the unmarked graves of Indigenous children demands the presentation of evidence, transparency, and responsibility—not denial, distortion, or silence."
"Without telling the truth, reconciliation is impossible; and without accountability, justice will never be achieved," he concluded.
Between the late 19th century and 1996, Canada’s government-funded and church-run residential school network forcibly separated more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children from their families and communities to assimilate them into dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
Children held within these boarding institutions were forbidden from speaking their ancestral languages or practicing their cultural traditions, enduring widespread physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, malnutrition, and dangerous living conditions.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) formally declared the residential school system a program of "cultural genocide," estimating that thousands of children perished while in custody. The issue drew worldwide outrage in 2021 after preliminary ground-penetrating radar searches detected hundreds of potential unmarked burial sites near the grounds of former residential schools across the country, intensifying calls from Indigenous communities and international observers for full forensic transparency and criminal accountability.
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