Canada: Two churches built on lands of indigenous people burnt down
After the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried underneath on the site of a former residential school for indigenous children run by the Roman Catholic Church in British Columbia, Canada, two Roman Catholic churches built on indigenous land were burnt down in southern Okanagan in the Canadian province, Vancouver Sun reported.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are treating the fires emerging out of the Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band land on National Indigenous People’s Day, as ‘suspicious’.
Less than two hours later after the burning of the Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band land at 3:10 a.m. Oliver RCMP and the Oliver Fire Department were informed of a fire in the St. Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Band land is also ablaze.
Vancouver Sun quoted Penticton South Okanagan RCMP spokesman Sgt. Jason Bayda who said, “Both churches burned to the ground and police are treating the fires as suspicious,”.
Once the news of the discovery of mass graves of children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School came to light, anger seethed over Canada and the Catholic Church’s treatment of indigenous people was palpable.
The 215 children found dead were as young as three years old who would have suffered abuse and beatings at the hands of Catholic priests and nuns.
These Catholic reformatory schools were started with the support from the Vatican from the 19th century until the 1970s. More than 150,000 indigenous children who the Church considered as heathens were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to ‘assimilate them into Canadian society’.
These helpless children were taken away from their parents and were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages so any connection to their culture and heritage was forgotten and this has been called a “cultural genocide,” that a six-year investigation had found in 2015.
Many children suffered all kinds of abuse from beatings to being sexually abused at the hands of priests and nuns and up to 6,000 are said to have died under these circumstances.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School was shut in 1978 and the sole purpose for establishing this boarding school is to obliterate First Nation culture.
This school was under the direct control of the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969 and was notorious for the brutality it unleashed on the children where they lived under the mercy of sadistic priests and nuns after being forcibly from their families.d
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada concluded that the residential schools were a system of “cultural genocide” and at least 4,100 students died while attending the schools, many of them due to abuse, negligence, disease, or accident.
The report highlighted in great detail the horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition, and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s.
“The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart – it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history. I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted Friday.
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS) urged the federal government and the Roman Catholic Church to take action and in a media release.
IRSSS co-chair Rick Alec, a member of the Ts’kw’aylaxw First Nation said, “My Creator is asking their God why disciples would do this to us,” he said. “The Pope needs to answer this question. There is no more denying it. Now there is physical evidence from these unmarked graves.”
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The nefarious ecosystem of N-A-M troika
In the past one-decade, western donor agencies have propped up a huge squadron of NGOs and think tanks to work on human rights of LGBTI+ people and other issues. These NGOs have also branched off into following areas:
They claim to work simultaneously on the full range of human rights issues which is solely aimed at creating political and social fault lines in the country. From defining the school and university curricula to influencing law-making on critical issues, they dominate the entire academic, media and political discourse. Their principal agenda is to create a regressive stereotype of Indian society and project India (Hindus) to be ‘anti-human rights’.
The creation of this stereotype is undertaken in a coordinated fashion by a carefully designed ecosystem of NGOs, academics, media. The funding of each element of this ecosystem can be traced to some or the other western donor. Post 2014, the FCRA law has been amended to restrict their funding. Still, they have invented alternative routes to secure funding and continue their work.
Some of the key individuals/organizations working in a coordinating manner are:
How The NAM Troika Works
On the outside, these organizations, activists and media seem like they stand for justice. But all of them come from a certain political and ideological position. They scratch each other’s back to help them promote themselves at the cost of lives and livelihood. Together, they form an ecosystem. Together, they form what is called the NAM troika – the NGO-Activist-Media troika.
This ecosystem of foreign funded organizations, academia, media and other outfits peddle a certain narrative that glorifies certain values and exaggerates half-truths. They are hell belt on shoving their opinions down the throat of people. They must be an even angrier lot now, considering that the government has stopped the money flow through problematic organizations into India by cancelling many of the FCRA licenses.
The NAM troika not just influences policy making and decisions by nurturing opinion makers and thought leaders to stand against development projects, but also spread anarchy knowingly or unknowingly.
They target select Ministries like the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc and Statutory bodies like National Human Rights Commission, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, etc to lobby and achieve their vested interests.
Here are some examples on how they infiltrate the system and emerge as trouble makers
1) Training on gender and sexuality issues in Schools/Universities: Organizations like Nazariya, Nirantar etc and individuals like Harish Iyer actively conduct sessions in schools across the country claiming to promote awareness on gender and sexuality. Recently, Oxfam India had come up with the idea of ‘Equality Clubs’ in schools where children in middle and high school are put through modules on ‘gender equality’, ‘diversity and inclusion’, etc. Basically, catching them young and indoctrinating to development them into individuals who will subscribe to their point of view in future. Such initiatives are directly or indirectly funded by the dreaded and nefarious philanthropist George Soros.
2) Lobbying with government/statutory bodies: These NGOs and academic are also part of key consultations organized by ministries, NITI Aayog as well as statutory bodies like Law Commission, UGC, NCERT, NHRC, NCW, NCPCR etc. Rituporna Borah from Nazariya has been part of curriculum making process in NCERT. Many of the state and national level textbook development committees have such people in the board.
3) Engineering social unrest: Such NGOs, activists and academics foment social unrest through campaigns and protests. The anti-CAA protests at Shaheenbagh, the Thoothukudi Sterlite protests are case in point. The media is the vehicle on which all these people ride to engineer social unrest. Through left-liberal and Islamist portals like The Wire, Alt News, The News Minute, Quint, etc, these NGOs and individuals get portrayed as as an enlightened intellectual and activist. Together they manufacture opinions and build narratives that further leads to social tensions.
What Needs To Be Done
1) Create stronger legal regulations to stop foreign funding of NGOs: Reforms are required in the FCRA and other laws which regulate foreign funding. Most of these NGOs are still getting foreign funds through alternative routes through fiscal sponsors and getting pocket funds which are within the prescribed limits. It is good to see the present government taking steps in this direction.
2) Insulating policy-making process from anti-India/ anti-Hindu groups: India is a mature democracy with firm constitutional safeguards in place for all minorities and groups. The formal policy consultation and formulation process are being dominated by groups who are openly hateful towards India/Hindus. Therefore, it is critically important that the policymaking process is insulating from the influence of such groups. Instead, the government should ensure that honest activists and scholars are given space and are duly consulted whenever policies related to human rights issues are being discussed.
3) Influencing international law and policy making process: Like domestic policy making process, the international law-making on human rights issues is also determined by groups who are not aligned with our values. Most of the UN bodies who are responsible for creating human right mechanism are based in Geneva and New York. The government should support individuals who are experts in this domain and are also aligned with Bhartiya values to participate in international forums and conferences.
4) Educate and train a network of activists, scholars, journalists: Training modules on human rights issues attuned to Indian traditions need to be prepared. This should be taken up on priority basis. HRD Ministry should urgently take up this issue and ensure that groups like Nazariya and Oxfam do not get access to our schools and universities.
Activism on issues related to gender and sexuality in India is going in a direction which is deeply problematic. Most of the activists who claim to work on these issues are being patronised by NGOs and donor groups based outside India. The space for constructive activism is shrinking because people who do not agree to their point of view or cancelled, denied platforms and deprived of institutional support. Currently, several Islamic and Christian organisations have begun to take advantage of the vulnerable situation of people belonging to gender variant communities and have started conversion activities at a large scale. Therefore, it is extremely important to take urgent steps towards countering such efforts by ‘Breaking India’ forces. Our nation is already facing a huge demographic challenge as a result of conversion activities of the church and Islamic organisations. It would be a great civilizational tragedy if we do not act in time. Many of these NGOs who claim to work for human rights of LGBTI+ people are deeply connected with extremist political organizations and also foreign organisations who only have a divisive agenda.
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