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Outlook: Canada's Abused Children

Justice Murray Sinclair

25/06/2015

Canada's Abused Children

BBC World Service - Outlook, Canada's Abused Children

Justice Murray Sinclair speaks up for Canada's abused indigenous children

Matthew Bannister speaks to Justice Murray Sinclair , the judge who headed Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the abuse of indigenous children.

For more than a century Canada's indigenous children were routinely taken from their families and forced to assimilate into Christian schools. Once there, many suffered horrendous sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Earlier this month a Truth and Reconciliation Commission ruled that what had happened to these children amounted to cultural genocide. Leading that Commission was Justice Murray Sinclair, one of Canada's first indigenous judges.

When his parents died, Anselmo Arruda inherited a large house in the Brazilian coastal town of Itanhaem. Anselmo was in his early 20s, he was lonely and had no need for so much space. So rather than sell it, he decided to turn the house into a skate park. Today the 'cave house' has become a mecca for skateboarders from all over Brazil.

Domaine de Bargylus is Syria's only commercial winery, and is managing to defy the country's bitter civil war and the spread of Islamist groups. It produced its first bottle of wine in 2006, and is the creation of brothers Karim and Sandro Saade who fulfilled a dream started by their father.

Kurdish singer Aynur grew up in a small mountain town in eastern Turkey, and now has an international reputation performing at concerts and music festivals all over the world. In recent Turkish elections, a pro- Kurdish party did better than expected. But Aynur's own experience growing up as a member of the Kurdish minority in Turkey, has directly impacted her career as a singer.

((Photo: Justice Murray Sinclair. Credit: Fred Catroll)

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