E D I T O R I A L

Slavery, Torture and now Little Repentance

FOR decades Canada and its various governments mortified and slighted early Chinese and Indian immigrants and denied them basic human rights. They were no more than beasts of burden. Chinese were burdened with an odious head tax. Happily the minority conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has now apologized and paid compensation. Indians won voting rights after a long arduous struggle in 1947 only. But racial discrimination is not the thing of the past. Travel across Canada and Asians recount the tales of such discrimination at places of work and market. This despite the fact an average white Canadian is a pleasant person to deal with. There is no denying as my friend and long time journalist colleague Surjan Singh Zirvi tells: “ we do not readily mix with the whites and other people from different races, colour and background. We are victims of a ghetto mentality and multi cultural practices are not much of our abode.” He finds lot of misgiving and even hatred among the Asians too. We far sure carry a huge baggage of hatred, misgivings and suffer the lack of self-assurance.

While need for Asians and other immigrants to put themselves at equal footing and strive for inter racial mixing is always there, the governments at the federal and provincial levels need to act the way it has recently acted. Canada and its government wronged a Canadian citizen Maher Arar by assisting the U.S. government, which sent him to Syria to be imprisoned and tortured. For that, the Harper government has now apologized and paid compensation. This did not happen naturally, but an enlightened public opinion forced the government.

The government also victimized native Canadians for decades, starting in 1874, when it offensively removed native children from their homes and placed them in those so called residential schools, where they were not allowed to speak their own language and where many of them suffered sexual and physical abuse.  Racists targeted their culture, way of life and language to dominate them and keep them as serfs.

Canada’s leading daily newspaper, the Toronto Star recently took  the Harper government to task for refusing to apologies to the natives who were deprived of their rights Including  even the right to life. It wrote,” While the Harper government is ready to pay compensation; it won't apologize on behalf of Canadians. Indeed, Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said this week the government has nothing to apologize for. In adopting this position, Harper and Prentice have broken a commitment made in 2005 by the previous Liberal government to apologize to the victims. Honouring such moral commitments ought to be just as important after a change in government as the obligation is to honour previous government's accumulated debt.”

There is basic fault in Prentice's case when he argued that no apology was called for, as  "the underlying objective (of residential schools) had been to try and provide an education to aboriginal children. The circumstances are completely different from Maher Arar or also from the Chinese head tax." When native families were torn apart and they suffered extensive cruelty, they need to be compensated and request for forgiveness is in order. This would enhance the status of Canada among the comity of nations. But as the latest budget that denied proper share to the natives makes it amply clear, the Harper government is in no mood to do the needful. For that it would go on inventing arguments. Those who are responsible for widespread abuse must come clean and apologise. There should be no room for hegemony.

People of Indian origin for over a century remained disfranchised. It was double slavery for them. They came from a country that was under imperial domination and exploited and suffered more when they landed as cheap labour to run the sawmills. The struggled paid off. They finally won their rights.

Natives, immigrants from Asia and the blacks need to remember the sacrifices their seniors made for the rights they enjoy. If they forget the debt of gratitude they owed to these great leaders, they shall have re- live their lives. History is witness to that. It is in this context the two accompanying reports are important.

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