Cover Up

Another cat is out of the bag. And another Pandora's box has been opened by the Harper government. No less than the Air India Inquiry.

The ex Supreme Court Justice John Major's appointed by Harper to conduct a public hearing into the Air India F.U. has discovered that like the Arar Inquiry the State has marshelled all their forces in a united front called National Security.

The RCMP, CSIS, Foreign Affairs, the whole crew of bunglers has blacked out what could be incriminating evidence, refusing the Justice to even preview it in private.

And what could their reason be? Besides being creatures of paranoia, that their secret security state would fall apart if it was revealed how they operate? Or perhaps like bungling Keystone Kops they fell all over each other in jurisdictional sectarianism that meant no one cooperated letting the bad guys get away with murder.

Or perhaps it is more sinister than that.

CSIS specializes in deep cover operations, as they did with setting up the Heritage Front, may have set had an agent provocateur within the cell. Did they in effect create this very cell to keep track of Sikh Nationalist Militants. Did they end up supplying them with the explosives they needed.

It has been done before by the RCMP. Who were also bugging the same cell, and could they be in possession of evidence of CSIS wrong doing?

Again a jurisdictional dispute arises allowing each security division of the State point fingers at each other for their mutual failure to halt an operation they both had under surveillance. Mountie cited Air India threat days before bombing, memo says

We may never know unless Justice Major gets to see all the evidence.

And if ever there was a case against State Security Laws like the Anti-Terrorism Act that give the police unlimited powers of arrest and detention, as well as the ability to declare operations secret and blacked out, then this is it.

This along with the Arar case, the Ottawa Citizen Case, etc. etc. is evidence that we have the same old Keystone Kops operating in the same old fashion that the MacDonald Commission on the RCMP identified as the problematic source of their wrong doing and undoing as a secret security force.

Something that the Conservatives fear dreadfully hence their out and out attempt to fabricate links between the Air India disaster and their current attempt to extend the Anti-Terrorism Act. An act that was put in place years after Air India.

How embarrassing for a self declared Right Wing Law and Order government that is demanding an extension of its draconian authoritarian Anti-Terrorism Act being told it is this very act that is halting the Air Inquiry.

Instead the Harpocrites take a page from the Bush White House and their yellow cake from Niger, Saddam has Nukes, falsehoods.

Harper and Co. are now spuriously linking the renewal of the Anti-Terrorism Act with the Air India inquiry, claiming the RCMP need the act to catch the bad guys twenty-five years later, and after a court case freed them because of CSIS/RCMP bungling.

What Justice Marshall needs is open access to ALL Government files from all its agencies involved in the Air India affair. And that demands the elimination of all Official Secrets Acts including the Anti-Terrorism Act that allow the State to cover up it's Keystone Kops agent provocateur's and their incompetence.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx

Articles referenced;

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

Fascists were CSIS Front

CSIS vs. CUPW

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Also See:

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime

Terrorism



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Will Flight PS752 victims be remembered differently than those killed in the Air India bombing?


January 13, 2020 

There’s been an incredible outpouring of grief across Canada since Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.

We have learned that among the 57 Canadians killed, there were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers. Children, newlyweds and entire families perished. Many of them have been described by Canadian news media and leaders as “exceptional.” They belonged to Canada’s vibrant Iranian communities and are being remembered as such in tributes and memorial services across the nation.

“Your entire country stands with you tonight, tomorrow, and in all the years to come,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told about 2,300 people who attended a memorial service in Edmonton on Sunday. “We share your grief,” he said on the day of the crash.

Trudeau called it a “moment of national pain” and recounted stories he’d heard from impacted families over the past few days, including one of a 10-year-old “who was confident he’d one day be prime minister of this country he loved so much.”


I’ve spent more than a dozen years researching public memory of another air disaster that resulted in an even greater number of Canadian casualties — the Air India tragedy.

Indeed, news of PS752 is triggering memories of June 23, 1985, when Air India Flight 182 fell into the Atlantic Ocean near Cork, Ireland, after a bomb hidden among the luggage exploded. All 329 passengers and crew on board that flight were killed. Among them were 280 Canadians, the majority from Indian-Canadian families, as reported by the official inquiry by Public Safety Canada.
‘I felt gutted’

Winnipeg resident Nicky Mehta was 13 at the time that her uncle, aunt and two young cousins were killed on the Air India flight. On the day after Flight PS752 crashed, she woke up to an abbreviated list of “deadly plane crashes that killed Canadians” published in the Winnipeg Free Press that did not include Air India. “I felt gutted,” she told me. “It was re-traumatizing to see that Air India was not even worth a mention here.” The article has since been removed.

Back in 1985, there was no collective outpouring of grief or statement of national solidarity for the victims of Air India Flight 182. Were these victims not “exceptional” enough? In fact, they too were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers, as well as homemakers, teachers, civil servants and more.

Notoriously, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered his condolences to Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi for India’s loss instead of addressing his own citizens.

 

A member of the Iranian community in Calgary lights a 

candle during a memorial for the victims of Flight PS752 crash.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

It is clear that for many Canadians (not just Mulroney) the Air India bombing was unthinkable — and thus unmemorable — as a tragedy of national consequence due to the dominant assumption that Canadian identity is synonymous with whiteness. Indeed, critics as well as relatives of the dead have raised the obvious question: would there have been such trouble recognizing the bombing as a national tragedy if the majority of those killed were white rather than brown Canadians?
Crucial evidence lost

Now well-documented as the result of criminal trial proceedings and a long-awaited federally appointed Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India 182 are repeated instances where government officials, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP and Canadian airport authorities ignored, disbelieved, erased and lost crucial evidence — including surveillance tapes of eventually acquitted suspects and warnings by the Indian government and Air India officials of an attack on the airline.

Relatives of those killed in the bombing of Flight 182 also testified to how the government failed to provide them with the most basic, practical supports in the days, months and years following the deaths of their loved ones, many citing compounded grief as a result of being treated like second-class citizens for their “Indian-ness.”

Sociologist Sherene Razack has said that although “there is evidence that some Canadian officials acted heroically,” systemic racism played a role in Canada’s pre- and post-bombing response or lack thereof. In her expert witness report for the inquiry, she observed:


“When police, political and media elites all consistently treated the Air India bombings as a foreign event, it is not surprising that Canadians do not recall June 23, 1985. As a nation, we were not shaken, transformed and moved to change our own institutional practices for a tragedy we considered had little to do with us.”

It would take 25 years of lobbying by Air India families before the government of Canada would publicly claim their loved ones, as well as the suspected perpetrators, as Canada’s own.
Has Canada changed?

Does the national mourning as a result of the tragedy of PS752 mean then that Canada has since changed? Are we befittingly shaken this time around? Other news reports are citing diversity and multiculturalism experts who think so, some claiming that there has been a “180-degree shift.” But I am curious to see how the victims of this tragedy (and those of the Air India bombings, for that matter) continue to be remembered in time.

Despite the fact that the Air India bombing is now referred to by public authorities as “the worst encounter with terrorism Canada has experienced,” or even “Canada’s 9/11,” most of my undergraduate university students have never heard of the incident.

The 35th anniversary of the Air India bombings approaches this coming June. It remains to be seen how long it will take for the Flight PS752 victims to be forgotten.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Indian

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit the memorial

 honouring victims of the 1985 Air India bombing at a 

ceremony in Toronto in 2015.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu

It also remains to be seen if the deaths of these passengers will be mobilized in the interests of increased western military involvement in the Middle East. Again I can’t help but think of the Air India bombings, and the ways in which the government of Stephen Harper strategically used the memory of its victims to bolster support for conservative anti-terrorist legislation; or more recently, conservative pundits who invoked the bombings over and over again to bait NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh before last fall’s federal election.

Nor am I convinced that Canada’s response to this recent air tragedy and the loss of so many Iranian-Canadian lives means racist reactions won’t still emerge.

Often during times of national crises and heightened political tensions, race-based fears and anxieties about foreign and/or domestic terrorism result in the intensified stereotyping of particular people and places as inherently threatening — as exemplified in President Donald Trump’s latest characterization of Iran as a “rough neighborhood.” To be sure, the potential for rising anti-Iranian sentiment in Canada also exists.

And so as further details of the tragedy in Tehran unfold and political players in and beyond Canada negotiate their stakes, I expect that public memory will shift along with it, including how the incident and its casualties are remembered and understood.

This is how public memory works: when new information and investments become present, we tend to revise how we make sense of the past.

The best we can hope for is that our practice of collective remembrance might become the grounds upon which those of us who were not immediately affected by the downing of PS752 — or the Air India bombings — join in memory and mourning with those who were. In doing so, we learn to live alongside one another in the aftermath of loss with renewed connection.

Author

Angela Failler

Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory, University of Winnipeg
Disclosure statement
Angela Failler receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs Program..
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ASSASSINATION 

Ripudaman Singh Malik, acquitted in Air India bombings, shot dead in Surrey, B.C.

Karin Larsen - 

Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of two men acquitted in the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings, has been shot to death in Surrey, B.C.

A witness told CBC he heard three shots and pulled Malik from his red Tesla bleeding from a neck wound.

The witness, who asked not to be named, said police were first to arrive at the scene.

A second witness from a nearby business in the 8200-block of 128 Street also identified Malik as the victim.

Surrey RCMP said a man shot at that location at around 9:30 a.m. PT succumbed to his injuries at the scene. They say it appears to be a targeted shooting and are not releasing the victim's name.

A suspect vehicle was located in the 12200-block of 82 Avenue engulfed in fire, according to police.


© Ben Nelms/CBCSurrey Police and RCMP officers are pictured at the scene of a fatal shooting in Surrey, British Columbia on Thursday, July 14, 2022.

Malik, who was in his mid-70s, owned a business near where he was killed.

Malik and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri were acquitted in 2005 of mass murder and conspiracy charges related to a pair of bombings in 1985 that killed 331 people, mostly from the Toronto and Vancouver areas.

Of those who died, 329 were aboard Air India Flight 182 when it exploded in mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean on June 23, 1985. Another bomb destined for a separate flight exploded at a Tokyo airport, killing two baggage handlers.

The killings amounted to the worst mass murder in Canadian history. Among the dead were 280 Canadians and 86 children.

Ripudaman Singh Malik killed in Surrey shooting

Reaction to Malik's death has been mixed.

"We lost a hero of the Sikh community" said longtime friend Ragibtir Bhinder speaking at the scene of the shooting. "We'd like this man to live a hundred years. It's hurting us."

Former British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh, a former acquaintance of Malik's, said he was a controversial figure.

"One of the other complicating factors is he made a recent visit to India where he wrote a letter in support of [Prime Minister] Modi and his policies and I think that may have reverberated and had implications within the community," said Dosanjh.

Malik, a successful businessman with significant influence among Canadian Sikhs, sued after his acquittal in an effort to get back $9.2 million in legal fees. He claimed the Crown knew the case fell short of standards, but pursued the case regardless because of pressure from the public.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge rejected Malik's financial claim in July 2012.

In recent years, Malik served as chairman with Khalsa School and managed two of the private schools' campuses in Surrey and Vancouver. He was also president of the Vancouver-based Khalsa Credit Union (KCU), which has more than 16,000 members.

Only one man was convicted in relation to the 1985 bombings. Inderjit Singh Reyat served 30 years for lying during two trials, including Malik's, and for helping to make the bombs at his home in Duncan, B.C.

Crown lawyers alleged the bombing was a terrorist attack against state-owned Air India, an act of revenge by B.C.-based Sikh extremists against the Indian government for ordering the army to raid Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in June 1984.

Malik, then 58, and Bagri, then 55, were acquitted after a highly publicized trial that stretched on for two years.

In the end, Justice Ian Josephson found the Crown's key witnesses, who testified that they heard the two defendants confess, were biased and unreliable.


© Lyle Stafford/REUTERS

Ripudaman Singh Malik, in grey, smiles as he leaves B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver in 2005 after being acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombing. Malik and his co-accused were both freed after a judge ruled testimony against them was not credible.

"These hundreds of men, women and children were entirely innocent victims of a diabolical act of terrorism unparalleled until recently in aviation history," reads the March 16, 2005 ruling. "Justice is not achieved, however, if persons are convicted on anything less than the requisite standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

The national Air India inquiry later concluded Talwinder Singh Parmar was the mastermind behind the deadly mid-air bombing. Parmar, 48, was shot and killed by police in India in 1992.

Another suspect, Hardial Singh Johal, died in November 2002.

THIS WAS A SCREW UP BY CSIS AND THE RCMP WHO SET UP SEPARATE STINGS AT CROSS PURPOSES AND IN THE CASE OF CSIS ABETTED THE BOMBING BY TRAINING SUSPECTS IN BOMB MAKING. 

SEE THE AIR CANADA BOMBING INVESTIGATION BY BOB RAE

Air India bomb-maker gets out 30 years later
Jan 27, 2016

Inderjit Singh Reyat the only man convicted at all in Canada's worst-ever mass murder. To read more
http://www.cbc.ca/news/1.3421505

Gimme More Public Inquiries

The Air India public inquiry shows why we need one into recent RCMP scandals and not Government appointed inquiries.

Inquiry highlights inter-agency issues: Rae

"I think what the public is hearing, perhaps in an abrupt way, is what I think has been pretty clear to people who have studied this for a long time -- that there really was a problem of communication between different levels of government, different departments, agencies, the RCMP and CSIS," Rae told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Friday.

With new information emerging from the inquiry, critics have wondered if race played a part in how authorities handling the case.

Asked if she thought the information Bartleman provided to the RCMP would have been treated differently if the plane was filled with whites, NDP MP Alexa McDonough said she felt it was a factor.

"I wish it weren't true. But I do think it's true," McDonough told Mike Duffy. "I also think it's shocking that as we pushed and pushed for an inquiry...they kept saying there's no need for an inquiry there's no new information there's nothing more to be learned.

"That turns out not to be true. It's an utter horror story, and thank goodness there is now a full public inquiry underway that can get to the bottom of this."

Shock, outrage and more questions

Their outrage was palpable. Family members of those killed in the Air-India disaster have been trying for more than 20 years to find out what happened at the time of the mid-air bombing.

Yesterday, they heard that days before it occurred, the RCMP brushed off information from an electronic intercept suggesting an Air-India flight had been targeted for the coming weekend.

"It's absolutely incredible," Prakash Sahu, who had a father, stepbrother and stepsister on the flight, said yesterday in an interview from Montreal. "This makes a mockery of what the RCMP were doing."

He was upset it took so long for someone to say publicly what many family members believed for so many years. He wondered why the Mounties have failed to bring those responsible for the bombings to justice. "They should have solved this long ago," he said from London, Ont.

The government resisted calls for a public inquiry for years by "hiding behind the criminal investigation," Mr. Paliwal said. He praised former Supreme Court judge John Major, who heads the inquiry. "We have a lot of confidence in him," he said.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

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Hardeep Nijjar met CSIS every week before killing that Trudeau links to India: son

Balraj Nijjar says he also attended a meeting between his father and the RCMP last year in which they were told about threats to his father's life


Nono Shen and Brenna Owen

VANCOUVER SUN
Published Sep 19, 2023 • 

The son of Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar says his father was meeting regularly with Canadian intelligence officers in the months before he was shot dead in British Columbia, in a killing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says has been credibly linked to India. Police officers attend the scene of a shooting outside of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara Sahib temple, in Surrey, B.C., Monday, June 19, 2023.

 PHOTO BY JENNIFER GAUTHIER /The Canadian Press

The son of Sikh community leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar says his father met regularly with Canadian intelligence officers in the months before he was shot dead in B.C. last June, a killing that’s been credibly linked to India, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons on Monday.

Balraj Singh Nijjar, 21, said his father had been meeting with Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers “once or twice a week,” including one or two days before the June 18 murder, with another meeting scheduled for two days after his death.

The meetings had started in February and had increased in frequency in the following three or four months, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

He said he also attended a meeting between his father and the RCMP last year in which they were told about threats to Nijjar’s life.

His father was advised to “stay at home,” he said.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar — a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement that advocates for a separate Sikh homeland inIndia’s Punjab region — was gunned down by two masked men in the parking lot of Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, where he was president.

Trudeau told Parliament that intelligence services were investigating “credible” information about “a potential link” between India’s government and the killing.

India’s government has denied the accusation as “absurd and motivated.”

Over the years, Balraj Singh Nijjar said his father had received hundreds of threatening messages telling him to stop his advocacy for Sikh independence.

“If you don’t stop talking about Khalistan, we’ll kill you. We know where you live. We know you go to this gurdwara,” he said of the messages.

He said they would always report the threats to the police, but neither he nor his father wanted to hide, and they felt protected under Canadian law.

“We weren’t worried about safety because we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just using freedom of speech,” he said.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S.-based spokesman for the group Sikhs for Justice and a close associate of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, said Nijjar had asked Canadian authorities whether he should wear a bulletproof vest in the weeks before he was gunned down.

The New York-based lawyer said Nijjar asked about the vest in April or May, and the agencies responded to the effect that they could not provide one.

Nijjar had also told him a year earlier that Canadian authorities had informed him of a threat to his life, Pannun said in an interview on Tuesday.

He said that call came shortly after the July 2022 shooting death of Ripudaman Singh Malik, who had been acquitted in the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings.

A 2005 Canadian government report concluded that the bombings that killed 331 people were carried out as a result of a conspiracy by Sikh Khalistani separatists that was “planned and executed” in Canada. Only one man, bomb maker Inderjit Singh Reyat, was ever convicted.

“He called me and (for the) first time specifically told me that Canadian agencies told him that the next target could be Nijjar,” Pannun said, referring to his conversation with Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

He said the Canadian authorities told Nijjar he shouldn’t go to his gurdwara at his usual times, and he should avoid being seen in public.

Pannun said he wasn’t aware of any precautions Nijjar may have taken to protect his personal security, but he believes his friend chose to go about his daily life despite the warnings because his campaigning in Canada was peaceful.

“Since the Khalistan referendum is a peaceful and a democratic process, and he is in Canada, where freedom of speech and expression is inherently a democratic, fundamental right,” Pannun said.

India takes a very different view and had previously accused both Pannun and Hardeep Nijjar of terrorism and separatism.

Nijjar had been the main co-ordinator in Canada for an unofficial global referendum on Sikh independence in India, Pannun said.

He said there are two versions of Nijjar in the public eye — one concocted by the Indian government accusing him of terrorism, and the true version.

“He was peacefully advocating for (the) Khalistan referendum.”

Outside that work, he said Nijjar helped support community members in need.

A media officer for the RCMP in B.C. said a request to confirm the warnings and advice given to Nijjar had been forwarded to the Mounties’ national headquarters. CSIS did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/09/canada-expels-indian-diplomat-as-it.html

MODI SECRET POLICE ACTIVE IN CANADA

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for AIR INDIA CSIS RCMP 

Keystone Kops and Air India

As I predicted;

Police had trouble piecing together Air India clues, inquiry told

Canadian Cops Laughed At Air India Warning

CSIS had Air India warning

Police ignored Air India warnings

Police learned of Air India plot months before bombing

Police had hint 11 days before 1985 disaster, inquiry on Air India.

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‘His spirit is still among us’: Sikhs defiant in Canada city where activist was murdered

Colleagues say they knew Hardeep Singh Nijjar could be targeted by India for his role in Canada as a community leader


Sarah Berman in Surrey, British Columbia

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 20 Sep 2023 17.40 BST


Justin Trudeau may have shocked the world this week when he linked “agents of India” to the murder of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia, but colleagues who worked alongside Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar before he was shot dead this summer said the link was already clear.

Canada killing adds to suspicions of Indian crackdown on Sikh separatists

“We’re not surprised,” said Gurkeerat Singh, a volunteer at the Surrey temple that Nijjar led from 2019 until his death on 18 June. “The whole community knew who was behind it. We knew that Hardeep Singh Nijjar could be targeted by the Indian state for his role as a community leader advocating for human rights and for a separate Sikh state.”

Surrey, British Columbia is a sprawling suburb outside Vancouver, hemmed in by highways to the east and west, the Fraser River to the north, and the United States border to the south. Since the 1980s the area has become a landing pad for many diasporic communities.

It is home to one of the largest Sikh communities outside of India, and the Guru Nanak Gurdwara – where Nijjar served as president – is a prominent global voice advocating for the creation of a Sikh homeland. But it also plays a key role in local life: every day the temple fills with hundreds of people seeking meals, disaster relief, and other kinds of aid.

Named after the religion’s founder, the temple sits on a deep lot behind blue and white pointed arches, with a silver dome and flagpoles rising above the front gates.

Worshippers at the gurdwara on Tuesday expressed overlapping relief, anger, hope and fear in reaction to Trudeau’s comments: relief that India’s alleged foreign interference was publicly named; anger that more wasn’t done to protect Nijjar; hope that Canada would take further action to hold perpetrators to account; and fear for personal safety as global tensions rise.

One temple volunteer, who asked not to be named, said that Canadian Sikhs with family in India were struggling.

“​​We are grateful somebody has finally stepped up and spoken for minorities in India,” she said. “Now obviously there are safety concerns. So, [for] Canadians that are going to be travelling to India, is it safe for us? Can we go? What’s going to happen if we go?”

On Tuesday, Canada issued new travel advice for India, warning of an increased threat of terror attacks in the country. On Wednesday, India followed suit, warning its nationals of “growing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate crimes” in Canada.

When Trudeau made his statement to parliament late on Monday, Nijjar’s supporters were set to gather for an evening prayer at the site of his assassination, a parking lot behind the gurdwara.

When the crowd started to gather on Monday night, news of the prime minister’s allegations had already filtered through the community. The prayer circle expanded to include performance, poetry reading, speeches and political organising.

“The way we deal with loss in our Sikh community is very different. Yes, there’s sadness,” Singh explained, “but if his sacrifice is what led to India’s hypocrisy and India’s brutality to be unmasked in front of the whole world, then his sacrifice is something to be celebrated.”

Three months after Nijjar’s death, no new president has replaced him. Volunteers who attended Monday’s gathering say there were both tears and smiles as the community celebrated its central pillar. Rows of yellow and blue Khalistani flags and a billboard bearing his likeness framed the scene.

“We feel like his spirit, his strength, is still among us,” Singh said.

Nijjar, who was born in Punjab, moved in the mid-90s to Canada, where he married, had two sons and opened a plumbing business. He was a naturalised Canadian citizen.

In 2020 Indian authorities accused Nijjar of belonging to a proscribed group and designated him as a “terrorist”. Last year, officials accused him of involvement in an alleged attack on a Hindu priest, and announced a cash reward for information leading to his arrest.

His colleagues remember him as a hard-working servant of his community, who would wake up before dawn to wash dishes or clean bathrooms before an early morning program at the temple. “He would be the first one to show up here and the last one to leave,” Singh recalled.

Sikh diaspora activism has long been a source of tension between India and Canada, with Delhi repeatedly accusing Ottawa of tolerating “terrorists and extremists”.

In the 1980s Sikh separatists were linked to attacks on India’s prime minister and Air India flight 182, which killed 329 people. Thousands of Sikhs were killed in retaliatory riots.

Gurkeerat Singh, 30, wasn’t born when these violent events took place, but he knows a “terrorist” stigma still lingers. Some Canadian Sikhs who oppose India’s crackdown on religious minorities don’t support an ethno-national solution, either.

Instead of silencing the separatists, Nijjar’s murder seems to be giving new life to the exiled political movement, he said.

The Guru Nanak temple’s walls are lined with posters asking members to vote “YES” for Punjabi independence.

“The Indian state might have thought that by killing one individual they might put a hold on this cause or put fear inside people,” Singh said. “For us, the people who were close to him, it gives us more inspiration.”

The temple hosted a non-binding separatist vote last month, and there are plans to host a second vote on 29 October. The Sikhs for Justice campaign, which has collected ballots in communities around the globe since 2021, aims to hold a vote in India by 2025.

Moninder Singh, spokesperson for the BC Sikh Gurdwara Council and a close friend of Nijjar, spoke to supporters in a video message on Monday.

“The underlying feeling is one of frustration and anger,” he said. “Nobody did anything for his protection. Nobody did anything to hold India accountable in any which way.”

Moninder Singh also raised concerns about ongoing intelligence sharing between Canada and India.

But amid the frustration, anger, and fears that another attack could follow, Singh said there was also a glimmer of hope. “Canada has never called India out like this before,” he said. “The people behind this attack on Canadian sovereignty should be held accountable no matter how high-ranking they are in the Indian government.”

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/09/canada-expels-indian-diplomat-as-it.html

MODI SECRET POLICE ACTIVE IN CANADA

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Justin Trudeau Accuses India of a Killing on Canadian Soil

The Canadian leader said agents of India had assassinated a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June. India called the accusation “absurd.”


India Accused of Killing Sikh Leader in Canada

Justin Trudeau said it was “unacceptable,” and the Canadian foreign minister said Ottawa had expelled a top Indian diplomat.

Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. In the strongest possible terms, I continue to urge the government of India to cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter. We’ve been clear we will not tolerate any form of foreign interference. As of today, and as a consequence, we’ve expelled a top Indian diplomat from Canada.

By Ian Austen and Vjosa Isai
Ian Austen reported from Ottawa, and Vjosa Isai from Toronto.

NEW YORK TIMES
Sept. 18, 2023

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Monday that “agents of the government of India” had carried out the assassination of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June, an explosive allegation that is likely to further sour relations between the two nations.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr. Trudeau said that he had raised India’s involvement in the shooting of the Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, directly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of 20 summit meeting earlier this month “in no uncertain terms.” He said the allegation was based on intelligence gathered by the Canadian government.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Mr. Trudeau told lawmakers. He said Canada would pressure India to cooperate with the investigation into the killing of Mr. Nijjar, who advocated Sikh separatism.

Mélanie Joly, the foreign minister, later announced that Canada had expelled an Indian diplomat whom she described as the head of India’s intelligence agency in Canada.

India’s foreign ministry rejected the Canadian allegations on Tuesday morning as “absurd” and politically motivated, saying that Canada had long provided shelter to “Khalistani terrorists and extremists” who threaten India’s security. Khalistan is what Sikh separatists call the independent state they seek to create.

The ministry said that Mr. Modi had “completely rejected” the allegations when Mr. Trudeau presented them to him. “We urge the government of Canada to take prompt and effective legal action against all anti-India elements operating from their soil,” the ministry said in a statement.

It later said that it had moved to expel a senior Canadian diplomat based in India.

The allegation that India’s government was involved in a political killing in Canada is likely to further corrode relations between the two countries. Earlier this month, Canada suspended negotiations on a trade deal with India that were scheduled to have been concluded this year — because of the assassination allegations, it now appears. During the G20, Mr. Modi excluded Mr. Trudeau from the list of leaders with whom he held formal bilateral meetings.

Mr. Trudeau said many Canadians of Indian origin — they make up about 4 percent of the population — had been angered by the killing and in some cases feared for their personal safety. There are about 1.4 million Canadians of Indian heritage, many of whom are Sikhs; they include Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, which is keeping Mr. Trudeau’s minority government in power. Singh is a common surname and middle name in Punjab.

Mr. Nijjar, 45, was shot near a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia. At a news conference in June, investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said he had been ambushed by masked men, but would not say whether the attack appeared politically motivated.

Mr. Nijjar was known for his advocacy of the creation of an independent Sikh nation, Khalistan, that would include parts of India’s Punjab state, and India had declared him a wanted terrorist.

Citing the police investigation, neither Ms. Joly nor Dominic LeBlanc, the minister of public safety, offered any details about Indian involvement in the killing. But Mr. LeBlanc said that Jody Thomas, Mr. Trudeau’s national security adviser, as well as the head of Canada’s intelligence service, had traveled over the past few weeks “to confront the Indian intelligence agencies with these allegations.”

It was unclear from the two minister’s remarks how forthcoming the Indian government has been or what cooperation, if any, it has offered.

Ms. Joly said she planned to discuss India’s actions during meetings with Canada’s allies after she travels to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly.

The announcement came on the same day that a judge opened a public inquiry into interference by foreign governments. It was prompted by allegations that China is meddling in Canadian politics, but Mr. LeBlanc said that reviewing India’s actions are within the inquiry’s mandate. “Obviously these allegations are at a much more serious level,” he said.

Mr. Nijjar was vocal about the threats to his life, which were shared with Canada’s spy agency, the World Sikh Organization of Canada, a nonprofit, said in a statement.

“If these allegations are true, they represent an outrageous affront to Canada’s sovereignty,” said Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party. “Our citizens must be safe from extrajudicial killings of all kinds, most of all from foreign governments.”

Mr. Singh, the New Democratic Party leader, broke with protocol to address the House of Commons in Punjabi as well English and said he had spoken with Mr. Nijjar’s son. “I could hear the pain of that loss in his voice,” Mr. Singh said. “I can only imagine how much more painful it is going to be knowing this potential connection.”

Rumors about possible retribution by India against those critical of its government have stoked fear within the Sikh expatriate community and discouraged many from returning to that country, Mr. Singh said. But Canada, he said, had been seen as “a beacon of safety.”

“That safety and security that so many Canadians feel has now been rocked,” he said.

Sikhs are a relatively small religious group, with about 25 million adherents worldwide, most of them in India.

A violent Sikh insurgency that took shape in India in the 1980s killed a number of government officials. The government responded with widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings, according to human rights groups.

In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent the military to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site in Sikhism, which had been fortified by heavily armed Sikh militants. The government said hundreds of people were killed in the clash, but others put the death toll in the thousands.

In retaliation, two of the prime minister’s Sikh body guards assassinated her, prompting riots in which thousands of Sikhs were killed.

In 1985 a bomb exploded on an Air India flight from Toronto to London, killing all 329 people on board. It remains Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack and worst mass murder.

After a prolonged investigation and trial, two Sikh separatists from British Columbia were acquitted in 2005 of murder and conspiracy in that explosion as well as a second blast that killed two baggage handlers in Japan. Many witnesses had either died — some were murdered — or apparently been intimidated out of testifying. Wiretaps by Canada’s intelligence agency had been erased before they could be used as evidence and physical evidence was destroyed in the blast.

A third Sikh man was found guilty of manslaughter for his role in making the bombs and, later, of perjury at the murder trial.

About a year ago, Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of the men acquitted in 2005, was shot to death. Two men were later arrested, but the killing rattled the Sikh community in British Columbia.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/09/canada-expels-indian-diplomat-as-it.html

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Really Corrupt Mounted Police

Gee it's hard to be a law and order government when the official state police force is riddled with corruption, cronyism and fraud.

Those who uphold the law once again act as if they are above the law.

Which suits the Harpocrites just fine since they are acting the same way.

a parliamentary committee reviews allegations of pension-fund fraud, cronyism, and three years of expense reports of former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli that were either swapped out or disappeared by his underlings, his successor, Bev Busson retires today. The planned departure comes only hours after the report of lawyer and Bay Street minence grise David Brown delivered a report on the force's corruption to Public Safety minister Stockwell Day. The RCMP, Mr. Brown declared, is "horribly broken."

Like other political police forces; the FBI and KGB for instance the RCMP have maintained their traditional para-military structure through political blackmail.

"I've worked with Liberals and Tories, and nobody wants to tangle with the RCMP," said Shirley Heafey, the former chair of the force's commission of public complaints.

"They have a lot of information on a lot of people ... It causes a chill. They have long memories in the RCMP."

And so do we on the left. We remember their infiltration of the left, their penchant for protecting strikebreakers and shooting strikers, their attack on the On to Ottawa Trekkers, their role in the Liberals attempt to discredit their opponents in particular the Quebec nationalists, their systemic refusal to deal with members of the force who abuse natives and prisoners, their role in the Arar affair and the Air India debacle, the list could go on and on.

After all the RCMP Motto is Maintain the Right.

The solution to the problem of the RCMP is three fold; implementation of the recommendations of thirty year old Macdonald Commission including; a non RCMP Commissioner, civilian control and oversight and allowing the rank and file to unionize.

Others call on Ottawa to break up the RCMP's mandate, which they believe is unwieldy. While it has many federal responsibilities whose powers range from protecting the borders against drug-smuggling, enforcing stock markets against fraud and investigating politicians, the RCMP's bread-and-butter is the contracts it has with provincial and municipal governments.

These contractual arrangements harken back to the RCMP's roots as a guns-for-hire protection and enforcement group, said Paul Palango, investigative reporter and author of The Last Guardians, a book on problems within the RCMP, calling them essentially a paramilitary force working at the behest of their hosts.

The force, he said, has turned into a hybrid organization that is both a business and a national institution.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

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Canada, anti-terrorism act, Government, Liberals, NDP, Conservatives, War Measures Act, 1970, Arar, terrorism, crime, liberalism, state, statism, libertarian, civil liberties
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Air India and the Conservatives

The Air India tragedy lays at the feet of our last Conservative government under then PM Brian Mulroney. A not unimportant political fact.

It was then covered up by the Liberals, whom were indebted to the RCMP for being the political guard dogs of the State; burning barns in Quebec, deporting Leonard Peltier, etc. etc.

And while the gnu Conservative government put in place the public inquiry, they had no choice after Bob Rae's report to the Liberal government on their screw up. And like their Liberal predecessors they continue to cover up for the RCMP.

But it was the Conservative government of the day that screwed up. Chickens, home, roost.

From day one the Air India bombing was seen as an Indian affair, not a Canadian one. The racism that led to this tragedy and its cover up is now finally seeing the light of day.

The fact Mulroney first called Gandhi to express condolences on the loss of life on the plane when most of the passengers were Canadians has long been criticised.

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Delhi finds few friends in furore over Canadian Sikh leader’s death

Anwar Iqbal Published September 20, 2023 

A mural features the image of late Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was slain on the grounds of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in June 2023, in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada on September 18. — Reuters

• India expels Canadian diplomat in tit-for-tat move; US, UK, Australia call for thorough investigation of Ottawa’s claim

• Washington ‘closely involved’ with gathering intel • Ex-Pakistan FM says India stands exposed

WASHINGTON: India on Tuesday expelled a Canadian diplomat, a day after after PM Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of being involved in the assassination of a Sikh activist on Canadian soil.

“The concerned diplomat has been asked to leave India within the next five days,” it said in a statement. “The decision reflects Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities.”

The tit-for-tat actions sent relations between the two otherwise friendly nations plunging, even as Canada insisted it was not trying to provoke India, rather it wanted the issue to be addressed properly.

“The government of India needs to take this matter with the utmost seriousness. We are doing that; we are not looking to provoke or escalate,” PM Trudeau told reporters on Tuesday.

Asked why Ottawa had spoken out now, Mr Trudeau said: “We wanted to make sure that we had a solid grounding in understanding what was going on … we wanted to make sure we were taking the time to talk with our allies.”



US ‘closely involved’

But since the Canadian PM’s speech before parliament on Monday, new information has come to light suggesting that the United States was ‘very closely’ involved in intelligence gathering that led authorities in Ottawa to conclude that Indian agents had been potentially involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia earlier this year.

Reuters quoted a senior Can­adian government source as saying: “We’ve been working with the US very closely, inc­luding on the public disclosure yesterday,” the source said.

The evidence in Canada’s possession would be shared “in due course”, the official said.

In Washington, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told journalists the United States was “deeply concerned about the allegations referenced” by Prime Minister Trudeau.

“We remain in regular contact with our Canadian partners. It is critical that Canada’s investigation proceed and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” she added.

Response from world capitals

But while New Delhi looked to go on the offensive against Canada, the response from other world capitals was measured and more pro-Ottawa than India would’ve liked.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Tuesday his government backs a Canadian investigation to determine whether India was involved in Nijjar’s killing.

“I think it’s incredibly important that we allow the Canadian authorities to conduct their investigation,” said Cleverly, adding it would be “unhelpful” to speculate on their outcome.



In Canberra, a spokesperson for Australian foreign minister Wong said Australia is “deeply concerned by these allegations and notes ongoing investigations into this matter”.

“We are closely engaged with partners on developments. We have conveyed our concerns at senior levels to India,” said the Australian official.

Australia & Canada are members of Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group, along with US, UK & New Zealand.

Centre-stage at UNGA

Nijjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple on June 18 in Surrey, which has a large Sikh population. He supported a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistan state and was designated by India as a “terrorist” in July 2020.

Michael Kugelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at Wilson Center, Washington, said the UN General Assembly, which is currently holding its 78th session in New York, “could become centre-stage for the India-Canada crisis”.

He noted that PM Trudeau is scheduled to address the session later this week. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, is not attending the session.

“We’ll see if Trudeau repeats his allegations against India. Though the UNGA meetings also provide an opportunity for backchannel talks to try to ease tensions,” he said.



Murtaza Haider, a professor of management at the Toronto Metropolitan University and an active member of Canada’s South Asian community, said the rift with India has more to do with Canada’s domestic politics than anything else.

“Trudeau is battling a declining approval rating and a rise in the popularity of Pierre Poilievre, the opposition leader.

The Punjabi Sikh community in Canada is a vibrant and sizeable community that exercises significant power in Canada’s electoral politics.“

“This may be an attempt to protect some swing ethnic ridings in the next elections, which are still a couple of years away,” Prof Haider added.

Tensions between India and Canada have been simmering over the unsolved slaying, and Indian unhappiness over how Ottawa has handled Sikh separatists.

Trudeau was in New Delhi last week for the G20 summit and met privately with his Indian counterpart, but his visit was a testament to the strained ties between their countries.

Canada also recently suspended negotiations for a free-trade agreement with India.

India exposed, says Bilawal

Commenting on the issue during an interaction with the media on Tuesday, former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was pleased that India’s crimes on the international stage had been laid bare.

“India has been exposed before the world. How long will the international community, especially the West, continue to ignore such incidents and actions of India?

’’It is time for the international community to accept that India has become a rogue, Hindutva terrorist state,“ he said.

“Not only have we caught spies who were involved in terrorism in our country, they [India] have now been caught violating the sovereignty of a Nato-member state.

’’This is not only a violation of Canadian sovereignty, but international law and norms,“ Mr Bhutto-Zardari said.

Amjad Mahmood in Lahore also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2023

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/09/canada-expels-indian-diplomat-as-it.html

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