After decades of silence .. Ireland begins extracting the remains of hundreds of children news

In Ireland – today, Monday – the first to extract the remains of 796 children buried without an official ceremony between 1925 and 1960, on the site of the former House of Saint Mary in the city of Tawam in the west of the country.

This comes more than 10 years after the discovery of the collective cemetery that rocked public opinion.

Local officials explained that the exhumation operations have been going on for two years, and carried out with the contribution of experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States, and aims to determine the positions of the remains, analyze them, and get to know the identities of the victims if possible, and provide them with decent burial after decades of neglect. DNA will also be collected from children’s relatives to expand the investigation.

The beginning of the case dates back to 2014, when local historian Catherine Corles revealed evidence of the death of these children and the absence of any burial records for them, which led to the opening of a national official investigation in 2021, which revealed shocking numbers: the death of 9,000 children in care institutions.

The women who were carrying out of marriage were forced to give birth inside this role, then the children were separated and often deported for adoption, amid procedures managed by the state and the Catholic Church together.

“These children were deprived of all human rights and dignity, they and their mothers, even after their death,” said Anna Korgan, whose might be among the victims.

This process faced a great influence over the years due to legal and social complications until an official law was issued that allows excavation in 2022, and the formation of a specialized team in 2023. The families of the victims are still criticizing the slow procedures, demanding justice and official recognition of the suffering of the victims.

Commenting on the beginning of the extraction, Corles, 71, expressed her happiness at achieving “unless you can imagine it”, hoping that the victims will finally get the noble burial and justice that they were deprived of for decades.