TEHRAN -- Iran’s Foreign 
Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Friday slammed Canada’s observance of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, saying a commemorative occasion does not resolve outstanding questions about Indigenous children who were removed from their families and subjected to forced assimilation.
In a post on X, Baghaei said the fate of Canada’s Indigenous children continues to weigh on the world’s conscience. He said they were separated from their families, deprived of their names, languages, cultures and identities, and placed in a system of forced assimilation in which many suffered abuse.
Canada marked the annual day on September 30 to honor residential school survivors and remember children who never returned home. 
Baghaei said reconciliation cannot be confined to a single day or reduced to political rhetoric, writing that it remains incomplete while serious questions go unanswered and the history of residential schools is contested or obscured.
He said the suffering of Indigenous children should not be treated as a culture war, but as a question of historical truth and accountability. 
Questions surrounding unmarked graves, he added, require evidence, transparency and an honest review of the historical record rather than denial or silence, concluding that there can be no reconciliation without truth and no justice without accountability.
The residential school system forcibly separated more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children from their families over more than a century. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony from more than 6,600 survivors and witnesses before concluding in 2015 that the system formed part of a state-supported policy of cultural genocide.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation said in September 2025 that it had verified 1,143 additional names of children who died as a result of the residential school system, while updating information on more than 1,000 other students after examining historical records and survivor and family testimony.