In a sym­bolic yet pow­er­ful protest, ac­tivists of the Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tion Dal Khalsa and its al­lies staged street protests in Lud­hi­ana, Hoshiarpur and Zira seek­ing the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion while the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion was ab­sorbed in en­joy­ing In­di­a’s Re­pub­lic Day.

Car­ry­ing the Sikh flag, hun­dreds of party ac­tivists shouted slo­gans in favour of the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and de­nounced the day as black day for the Sikhs. The re­bel­lious demon­stra­tors car­ried Sikh flags, ban­ners and plac­ards, chant­ing slo­gans of ‘Free Pun­jab from In­dia’ and called In­dian democ­racy fake and bo­gus.

Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, party head Harpal Singh Cheema in Hoshiarpur said, “It has been 70 long years since the adop­tion of Con­sti­tu­tion, but noth­ing has changed. The orig­i­nal promises and com­mit­ments in­clud­ing right to self de­ter­mi­na­tion and right to se­cede are long for­got­ten by the In­dian lead­er­ship.”

Al­though the right to self de­ter­mi­na­tion has been adopted by the United Na­tions and car­ries its sanc­tion, most coun­tries in­clud­ing In­dia sub­vert this right in the name of ter­ri­to­r­ial in­tegrity and unity of the coun­try and even go to the ex­tent of dub­bing the pro­po­nents of this right as ex­trem­ists, said Cheema and ex­horted the peo­ple of Pun­jab to be more aware about the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this Act.

We will con­tinue our strug­gle will con­tinue till we have the op­por­tu­nity to ex­er­cise this de­mo­c­ra­tic right, said an­other leader Har­cha­ran­jit Singh Dhami.

Sikh Youth of Pun­jab leader Paramjit Singh Mand said im­punity to se­cu­rity forces leads to gross abuse of hu­man rights.

Dal Khalsa spokesper­son Kan­war Pal Singh, speak­ing at the Lud­hi­ana rally touched the cause of the Kash­miris and Dal­its and said that Sikhs were not alone in this iden­tity cri­sis.At Zira town, the March was led by Baba Hard­eep Singh Mehraj and Lakha Sidana. They de­manded the ar­rest of tainted cops re­spon­si­bile for the Be­hbal Kalan fir­ing.