Two new churches were set on fire on Saturday, June 26, in indigenous lands in western Canada, bringing to four the number of churches burnt since the discovery of a thousand anonymous graves near former residential schools managed by the Catholic Church in British Columbia.
At dawn on Saturday, St. Ann’s Church and Chopaka Church, both located on bands of Indigenous lands in British Columbia, were set on fire within an hour of each other, police said. federal. “The two churches were destroyed”Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Jason Bayda said in a statement.
These fires broke out two days after the announcement of the discovery of more than 750 anonymous graves on the site of a former boarding school managed by the Catholic Church in Marieval. Last month, the identification of the remains of 215 children near another similar facility had already bruised and outraged the country, illustrating the ordeal suffered for decades by indigenous children in schools run by the Catholic Church. .
“Terrible mistakes”
Authorities consider the fires on Saturday to be “Suspects and seeking to ascertain whether they have a connection to the church fires that occurred on June 21 in Penticton and Oliver”, said Sergeant Bayda. Investigations into the fires that occurred on June 21 are still ongoing.
The discovery of the graves rekindled the trauma experienced by some 150,000 Amerindian, Métis and Inuit children, cut off from their families, their language and their culture and forcibly enrolled until the 1990s in 139 of these residential schools across the country. . Many of them have been subjected to ill-treatment or sexual abuse, and more than 4,000 have died there, according to a commission of inquiry which found a real “Cultural genocide” from Canada.
On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized from his country, called on the Pope to do the same and did not rule out a criminal investigation. During a press briefing, he discussed at length the “Terrible mistakes” of Canada, which for several centuries pursued a controversial policy of forced assimilation of the First Nations.