Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has formally apologised in parliament for the internment of Italo-Canadians during the Second World War, recognising that hundreds of people were denied a f air trial.
After Italy declared war on Canada in 1940, Ottawa detained over 600 people of Italian origin and declared some 31,000 Italo-Canadians "enemy foreigners".
Trudeau recalled that those so labelled were kept under control, forced to give fingerprints and to report to local authorities once a month.
"To those men and women who were taken prisoner in labour camps or jailed without charges, to the people who are no longer with us to hear this apology, to the tens of thousands of innocent Italo-Canadians who were labelled enemy foreigners, to the children and grandchildren who bore the shame and the wrongs of the past generation, and to their community - a community that has given so much to out country - we extend our apologies and we say that we are sorry," said Trudeau.
He said that fighting the Fascist regime that stood with Nazi Germany was right but blaming Italo-Canadians who were respecting gthe law was wrong.
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