A group of indigenous women are hoping to stop the bulldozers at a former Montreal hospital that they believe could hold the truth about children still missing from a grisly half-century-old CIA experiment.
They have spent the past two years trying to delay the construction project by McGill University and the Quebec government.
“They took our children and had all kinds of things done to them. They were experimenting on them,” said Kahentinetha, an 85-year-old rights advocate from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, southwest of Montreal, who goes by just one name.
Photo: AFP
The women are relying on archives and testimonies that suggest the site contains unmarked graves of children formerly interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute, a neighboring psychiatric hospital.
In the 1950s and 1960s, behind the walls of the old psychiatric institute, the US CIA funded a human experiments program called MK Ultra. During the Cold War, the program aimed to develop procedures and drugs to effectively brainwash people.
Experiments were conducted in the UK, Canada and the US, subjecting people — including indigenous children in Montreal — to electroshocks, hallucinogenic drugs and sensory deprivation.
“They wanted to erase us,” Kahentinetha said.
A leading figure in the indigenous rights movement who has traveled to the UK and the US to denounce colonialism, she called this fight “the most important of [her] life.”
“We want to know why they did this and who’s going to take the blame for it,” she said.
In the fall of 2022, the mothers obtained an injunction to suspend work on a new university campus and research center at the site — a project worth C$870 million (US$643 million).
Fellow rights advocate Kwetiio, 52, who also uses just one name, said they insisted on arguing the case themselves without lawyers, “because in our ways, no one speaks for us.”
Last summer, sniffer dogs and specialized probes were brought in to search the property’s expansive and dilapidated buildings. They identified three areas of interest for excavations.
However, McGill and the government’s Societe Quebecoise des Infrastructure say that “no human remains have been discovered.”
The Mohawk mothers accuse the university and the government infrastructure agency of breaching an agreement by selecting the archeologists who did the search and then ending their work too soon.
“They gave themselves the power to lead the investigation of crimes that were potentially committed by their own employees in the past,” said Philippe Blouin, an anthropologist working with the women.
Even though their appeal was dismissed earlier this month, they have vowed to continue their fight.
“People should know history, so that it does not repeat itself,” Kwetiio said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS