WSN ed­i­tor re­views the Pub­lic Safety Canada’s 2018 Pub­lic Re­port on the Ter­ror­ism Threat to Canada which makes un­sub­stan­ti­ated ref­er­ence to Sikh (Khal­is­tani) ex­trem­ism.

Mul­ti­cul­tural Canada, home to thou­sands of Sikh Cana­di­ans who now make 2 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try and are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, le­gal and sports are­nas are sur­prised that the lat­est Pub­lic Safety Canada’s 2018 Pub­lic Re­port on the Ter­ror­ism Threat to Canada has for the first time in­cluded a sec­tion on “Sikh (Khal­is­tani) Ex­trem­ism”.

The one para­graph in­nocu­ous ref­er­ence to this kind of ter­ror­ism in the re­port does not make any al­le­ga­tions against any Sikh Cana­dian.  Typ­i­cally like any In­dian or South Asian re­port, the re­port is with­out any de­tail or ref­er­ence, yet states, “some in­di­vid­u­als in Canada con­tinue to sup­port Sikh (Khal­is­tani) ex­trem­ist ide­olo­gies and move­ments.” The Air In­dia tragedy of 1985 is men­tioned as the only in­ci­dent of vi­o­lence in re­la­tion to the Sikh com­mu­nity. There is no ref­er­ence to any other in­ci­dent what­so­ever.

The re­port con­cludes by say­ing, “two key Sikh or­ga­ni­za­tions, Bab­bar Khalsa In­ter­na­tional and the In­ter­na­tional Sikh Youth Fed­er­a­tion, have been iden­ti­fied as be­ing as­so­ci­ated with ter­ror­ism and re­main listed ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties un­der the Crim­i­nal Code.” No de­tails of any re­cent ac­tiv­ity of vi­o­lence have been pro­vided.

The highly redacted spe­cial se­cu­rity re­port by the Na­tional Se­cu­rity and In­tel­li­gence Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans on Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau’s trip to In­dia, re­leased last week, also re­lied on hearsay and not hard ev­i­dence and had stereo­typed pro­fil­ing of Sikhs, in­clud­ing Sikh Cana­di­ans. It did how­ever ex­pose the overzeal­ous ap­proach by In­dia to harp on the is­sue of Sikh ex­trem­ism. 

The ac­cep­tance and ac­com­mo­da­tion shown by the Lib­eral Justin Trudeau-led gov­ern­ment to not only Sikh Cana­di­ans but oth­ers must be cap­i­tal­ized upon by ig­nor­ing In­di­a’s at­tempts to ma­lign Sikhs. Suc­cumb­ing to the pres­sures of the vast mar­ket po­ten­tial of In­dia may be a good eco­nomic pol­icy but is highly un­eth­i­cal.

The Cana­dian gov­ern­ment will do well to dwell into the al­le­ga­tions by Sikh Cana­di­ans about the state of hu­man rights in In­dia and come up with State of Hu­man Rights in In­dia re­port every year. This will pro­vide a true pic­ture to all Cana­di­ans as to the ra­tio­nale for Sikh ac­tivism on this front in Canada, In­dia and the rest of the world. 

Hu­man rights mon­i­tor­ing bod­ies like the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion have ex­pressed fears that the in­creased co­op­er­a­tion be­tween In­dia and Canada on the ba­sis of the Frame­work for Co­op­er­a­tion on Coun­ter­ing Ter­ror­ism and Vi­o­lent Ex­trem­ism be­tween Canada and In­dia, signed be­tween the two coun­tries last year por­tends a high risk for Sikh Cana­di­ans. 

Does Pub­lic Safety Canada have a re­ply to the WSO state­ment that “Ad­vo­cacy for Sikh hu­man rights or Khal­is­tan is not ex­trem­ism and to sug­gest that it poses a dan­ger to Canada is ab­solutely lu­di­crous? Ac­cept­ing In­dian al­le­ga­tions of ‘Sikh ex­trem­ism’ deeply ma­ligns the rep­u­ta­tion of the com­mu­nity and has a real im­pact on the every­day lives of Cana­dian Sikhs.”

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

Canada does not have to buy any ar­gu­ment for or against the Sikhs from any­one and least of all from In­dia. World Sikh News be­lieves that Pub­lic Safety Canada must with­draw the un­sub­stan­ti­ated men­tion to Sikh ex­trem­ism in their 2018 an­nual re­port.