Source : Google photo of an abused Native Australian
child
Synopsis : It is sad that the so called religious people
who demand respect are the ones who abuse the children and women in need. There
is a worldwide condemnation of the clergy, priests and nuns who have mistreated
and continue to mistreat the poor, the young and the vulnerable in the name of
helping them. This story should shock you if you are a decent person and have
compassion for the abused people anywhere.
The native population of many countries have suffered in
the hands of the white people for centuries because of racism and
discrimination based on racism. There was a time when the entire country of the
United States was occupied by numerous tribes of Native Americans who are still
wrongly called Indians. They had lived for thousands of years and developed a
strong and very rich culture of their own that was unique and beautiful.
Most of the tribes lived as nomads depending on hunting
and gathering wild fruits and grains so they constantly moved from place to
place to find game and other things for their sustenance. They were not settled
farmers although there were some tribes that stayed put and grew crops to feed
themselves.
Then came the scourge of white people who forcibly took
over the land and killed off or chased away the Native Americans thus denying
them hunting so they started dying off not only from hunger but also due to the
diseases introduced by the white immigrants like small pox and sexual diseases
to which the Natives had no immunity.
Later the natives were given barren places to live on
called Indian reservations where they still live and try to survive selling the
handicraft and jewelries they make for the tourists but alcoholism and drug
abuse remains a problem. The domestic
violence and suicide rate remains a major concern because once proud Native
Americans feel neglected and marginalized seek a way out of their poverty.
The worst affected were the children who have suffered in
the hands of whites who were taken away from their loved ones to dismal schools
and convents where they were mistreated , sexually violated and beaten into
submission to make them “ civilized “ They were forced to learn English and
wear clothes alien to them. They were punished for speaking in their own
language and practice their culture so these unhappy children grew up under
pitiful conditions and many tried to escape but were caught and brought back to
their prisons.
In Australia the Native Australian children were so
maltreated and traumatized to be separated from their parents and their
communities that it scarred them for life.
When you forcibly separate the children from the
communities where they were born into strange places called reformatories, they
lost all touch with their homes and their language and culture and with it all
the knowledge they could have acquired from their parents and others to
survive.
Source : U Tube video on the abuse of Native Australian children
They were taken away by the whites who wanted these children to be “civilized “by teaching them to wear western clothes and speaking only English. Imagine the pain the parents suffered from this treatment because they never understood what was wrong with their culture, their language and their food or clothes. They had lived this way for thousands of years until the white colonialists arrived to set up their penal colonies for the convicts they brought in from England.
With the convicts came the missionaries who saw it as
their duty to bring some religion to the convicts and civilize the Native
Australians using harsh methods by making them good Christians in the process.
The true horror of these reform schools run by the
missionaries trickled out slowly over the years to expose the brutality these
children suffered in the hands of their keepers. They were sexually violated,
beaten and even starved to force them into submission so these innocent
children suffered.
The worst story recently came out of Canada where
hundreds of remains of children of Native Americans were found. They were the
victims of serious abuse over a long period of time but it has only come to
light now that has shocked the world. How many more such horror stories are
waiting to be told is anyone’s guess.
Canada mourns 215 children after remains found at
indigenous school
Source : Google photo of Canada's national flag flies at half-mast after the remains of 215 children were discovered in a mass grave at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site (Reuters photo)
Canada flew its flags at half-mast Sunday in mourning for 215 children whose remains were discovered on the grounds of a former boarding school set up more than a century ago to assimilate indigenous peoples.
Source : U Tube video on the abuse of Native American children in Canada
"To honor the 215 children whose lives were taken at the former Kamloops residential school and all Indigenous children who never made it home, the survivors, and their families, I have asked that the Peace Tower flag (in Ottawa) and flags on all federal buildings be flown at half-mast," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Twitter.
Several municipalities, including the economic metropolis Toronto, announced they would also lower their flags.
The discovery of the children's remains, some as young as three, sparked strong emotions throughout Canada, particularly in the indigenous communities.
A specialist used ground-penetrating radar to confirm the
remains of the students who attended the school near Kamloops, British
Columbia, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc tribe said in a statement late Thursday.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest of 139 boarding schools set up in the late 19th century, with up to 500 students registered and attending at any one time.
It was operated by the Catholic church on behalf of the Canadian government from 1890 to 1969. Some 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis youngsters in total were forcibly enrolled in these schools, where students were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers who stripped them of their culture and language.
Today those experiences are blamed for a high incidence of poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence, as well as high suicide rates, in their communities.
Ottawa formally apologized in 2008 for what the commission later termed a "cultural genocide" as part of a Can$1.9 billion (US$1.6 billion) settlement with former students.
"I've said before that the residential schools was a
genocide of our people. Here's just another glowing example of that genocide in
practice: undocumented deaths of children," the national chief of the
Assembly of First Nations, Perry Bellegarde, said Sunday on the news channel
CTV.
Bellegarde noted there was still much work to be done to
identify the remains, find their families and examine the sites of other
residential schools.
He said the federal government "does have a
responsibility to make sure that these resources are in place to get the
answers."
Ceremonies to honor the young victims took place or were to take place
throughout the country. About 100 people gathered Sunday in the Mohawk
community of Kahnawake, near Montreal. Participants placed children's shoes and
toys on the steps of the Saint Francis Xavier church as a tribute to the
victims. ( Wikipedia )
Source : U Tube video on the abuse of Irish children in Tuam
You have perhaps also heard of the hundreds of children
who died and were secretly buried in a place called Tuam run by the Catholic
nuns in Ireland. The nuns ran a place where unwed mothers were given shelter
but their illegitimate children were treated as garbage so they died of
malnutrition, hunger and disease. It is not known if the nuns killed them but
surely they helped them die young because of their conviction that they were
the product of sin.
Mass grave of babies and children found at Tuam care home
in Ireland.
Excavations at site of home for unmarried mothers and their children, where it is alleged up to 800 children died, uncover human remains
Source : Wikipedia- Human remains have been discovered in underground chambers at the site in Tuam, Galway. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
A mass grave containing the remains of babies and children
has been discovered at a former Catholic care home in Ireland where it has
been alleged up to 800 died, government-appointed investigators said on Friday.
Excavations at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother
and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, have uncovered an underground structure
divided into 20 chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains”,
the judge-led mother and baby homes commission said.
The commission said analysis of selected remains revealed
ages of the deceased ranged from 35 weeks to three years old. It found that the
dead had been mostly buried in the 1950s, when the facility was one of more
than a dozen in Ireland offering shelter to orphans, unmarried mothers and
their children. The Tuam home closed in 1961.
The home, run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic
religious order of nuns, received unmarried pregnant women to give birth. The
women were separated from their children, who remained elsewhere in the home,
raised by nuns, until they could be adopted.
The shrine erected in memory of the up to 800 children allegedly buried at the site of the former home. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images
The discovery confirms decades of suspicions that the
vast majority of children
who died at the home were interred on the site in unmarked graves, a
common practice at such Catholic-run facilities amid high child mortality rates
in early 20th-century Ireland.
Source : U Tube video of the abuse of Irish children in Tuam, Ireland
The Irish government in 2014 formed the commission following
the work of a local Tuam historian, Catherine Corless, who found death
certificates for nearly 800 children who were residents at the facility but
burial records for only two.
“Everything pointed to this area being a mass grave,” Corless
previously told the Guardian. She recalled how boys playing in the field
had reported seeing a pile of bones in a hidden underground chamber there in
the mid-1970s.
The government’s commissioner for children, Katherine
Zappone, said the findings were “sad and disturbing” and promised that the
children’s families would be consulted on providing proper burials and other
memorials.
“We will honour their memory and make sure that we take
the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately,” Zappone said.
Source : Photo of Catherine Corless. Patrick Bolger Photogrraphy
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Corless requested
Galway county council’s records on the home from 1925 to 1961. She was refused.
But she was given documents from the 1970s, including an
official map of the present-day estate the council built on the site.
“They obviously didn’t see the importance,” said Corless.
“There is an area across the map marked ‘burial ground’,” she says. “First, the
houses were built, around that area. Finally a playground was built on part of
the burial ground itself.”
It is a fact that the Catholic Church in many countries
ran the schools, reformatories and places of incarceration for the unfortunate
women and children who suffered there without any recourse to justice. The nuns
who ran these places had no compassion for them so they treated them brutally
in the name of paving their way to purgatory but what was the sin committed by
the innocent children?
There are numerous stories of abuse done to the underage
and children by the Catholic priests in many countries that has only lately
been recognized by the Vatican that has now promulgated laws to stop such
abuses but they still do not talk about punishing the guilty and restitution to
those abused. Many such abusers are still a part of the church pretending that
nothing has happened. The Protestant churches are not blameless either .
The sad part is that the Vatican until now has not
allowed its clergy to be brought to any civil court to face trial so protects
the guilty. But aren’t the governments in many countries guilty of not doing
enough to protect the children and all those who have suffered? Saying sorry is
never enough. The guilty people must be punished for the crimes they have
committed and the victims if still alive must be compensated and given a fair
chance of living in peace somewhere.
But I would like to know how a victim who has been thus
abused and traumatized can live in peace anywhere. Can such scars be healed by
money and an apology? Can the souls of all those children who died of abuse and
neglect be appeased? Can anyone have faith and respect for those who have
abused their power this way? I would definitely like to know.
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