The United States, Canada, and Australia violating the rights of indigenous people is not something of the past, a senior Chinese diplomat said in Geneva Friday, stressing that the issue was a matter of ongoing chronic and systemic racism.

Chinese delegate to the United Nations Jiang Duan called on the western countries to eradicate their malignant legacies of colonialism and weed out systemic racism and discrimination festering within them to ensure the equality and rights of the indigenous peoples.

Jiang's words came during a video side-event hosted by his country's Permanent Mission to the United Nations and its Venezuelan counterpart during the 49th session of the Human Rights Council.

The senior Chinese diplomat accused the United States of systematically depriving Indigenous Americans of their basic rights by killing and displacing them, as well forcing their assimilation. The rights infringed by the US, as cited by Jiang, included the indigenous people's right to life and their political, economic, and cultural rights, saying the systemic acts were an attempt to physically and culturally eradicate the entire indigenous community.

The population of Native Americans, Beijing's delegate said, "plummeted from five million at the end of the 15th century to 237,000 at the beginning of the 20th century when many tribes were completely extinct."

Mass graves in residential Canadian schools

The Chinese delegate touched on last year's scandal in Canada, where hundreds of mass graves were discovered in a number of the country's residential schools.

Since the beginning of last year, there have been shocking and distressing discoveries of a large number of unmarked graves and remains of indigenous children in Canada, and the truth remains untangled to this day, Jiang underlined.

The unmarked graves in Canadian residential schools shocked the world, especially that they were being continuously unearthed over the period of nearly a year up until early on this year, with 93 unmarked graves found in a school in British Columbia.

Children were often caught trying to escape from the school, and reports in 1928 claim two boys drowned trying to escape by boat. Survivors testify that numerous children went missing or died while attending the school. 

Even later on, in mid-February, more unmarked graves were found at two former Saskatchewan residential schools, adding to the heart-aching series of discoveries of children who were abused and mistreated at the Catholic schools trying to prohibit children from practicing their culture and convert them to Christianity.

Children were often caught trying to escape from the school, and reports in 1928 claim two boys drowned trying to escape by boat. Survivors testify that numerous children went missing or died while attending the school.

White Australia Policy

Australia, according to the senior diplomat, had continuously pursued the notorious "White Australia Policy", as per which Canberra forcibly took 100,000 aboriginal children from their families, causing "lifetime harm and trauma to the stolen generation.

Shedding the light on the discrimination indigenous peoples are subject to, Jiang said, "Today, indigenous peoples are still subject to widespread and systemic discrimination and inequality in these countries, and are marginalized and left at the bottom of society politically, economically and culturally. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated their disadvantaged situation."

Finally, the Chinese diplomat urged the United States, Canada, and Australia to reflect seriously and their wrongdoings, immediately amend law and change policies that violate indigenous peoples' rights, investigate the crimes, and hold the perpetrators accountable.

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