Speaking at the Interactive Dialogue with the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Jiang Duan, minister of the Chinese mission to the United Nations in Geneva, said that genocide is a universally acknowledged severe international crime and the devastating impacts of genocide is still felt today.

 

In the United States, Jiang said, native American Indians were expelled from their land and slaughtered during the so-called Westward Expansion in nearly 100 years after the country was founded. Their population dwindled from 5 million at the end of the 15th century to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Today, American Indians are living in isolated and desolated Reservations in the United States, he added.

 

Jiang pointed out that in Canada, over 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly sent to residential schools for assimilation, and at least 3,200 were abused to death.

 

"This is only the tip of the iceberg in the number of indigenous people who died of genocide in Canada," he said.

 

He further said that other western countries also committed severe crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity in colonizing and invading other countries.