As the im­ages and live videos of hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions by the goons of the Bharatiya Janata Party, with full back-up, cover and com­plic­ity of the Delhi Po­lice reach the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity, Sikhs world­wide and hu­man rights de­fend­ers raise their deep con­cern and con­ster­na­tion at the com­plic­ity of the state in once again brow­beat­ing the Sikhs, this time peace­ful pro­tes­tors of the farm­ers’ rights move­ment, ab­duc­tion and im­pris­on­ment of in­de­pen­dent web jour­nal­ists on the pe­riph­ery of Delhi. World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada has urged the Cana­dian Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, Mr Gar­neau, to take up the mat­ter with the In­dian gov­ern­ment with­out de­lay.  WSN re­ports.

World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada ex­pressed deep con­cern at the rapidly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in In­dia in light of the on­go­ing farm­ers’ protest. Over the past sev­eral days, pro­tes­tors have been at­tacked, jour­nal­ists have been ab­ducted and In­dian au­thor­i­ties have shown a reck­less dis­re­gard for ba­sic de­mo­c­ra­tic and hu­man rights.

WSO Pres­i­dent Tejin­der Singh Sidhu wrote to the Cana­dian min­is­ter say­ing, “for over two months farm­ers from Pun­jab and across In­dia have gath­ered on the out­skirts of Delhi in protest against agri­cul­tural re­form laws en­acted with­out con­sul­ta­tion and due process by the rul­ing BJP gov­ern­ment. Since Jan­u­ary 26, the sit­u­a­tion in Delhi has wors­ened and there are con­firmed re­ports of pro­tes­tors, jour­nal­ists and ac­tivists be­ing at­tacked, beaten, ab­ducted and dis­ap­peared by se­cu­rity agen­cies.”

He fur­ther stated that “Protest sites have also been at­tacked by right-wing Hin­dutva mobs as po­lice ei­ther ac­tively par­tic­i­pated or looked the other way. In­ter­net ser­vice around the protest sites has been sus­pended so as to pre­vent pro­tes­tors from shar­ing their bru­tal treat­ment with the rest of the world.”

“Dozens of peace­ful pro­tes­tors have been ab­ducted by the po­lice and falsely charged. Al­though ap­prox­i­mately 40 pro­tes­tors have been traced, dozens more re­main un­ac­counted for.”

WSO has par­tic­u­larly men­tioned the case of Man­deep Pu­nia, a reg­u­lar free­lance con­trib­u­tor to The Car­a­van mag­a­zine who was ab­ducted by the po­lice while he re­ported on the protests.  In his quick Face­book post, hours be­fore his il­le­gal ar­rest, Man­deep Pu­nia had dar­ingly laid bared the iden­tity and role of BJP lead­ers mas­querad­ing as nearby vil­lagers, who were part of the mob that at­tacked the protest site. He also ex­posed how the po­lice were com­plicit and how the main­stream me­dia had pho­to­shopped pic­tures to re­move the po­lice pres­ence to de­pict the mobs.

With­out minc­ing words, Tejin­der Singh Sidhu said, “As In­di­a’s gov­ern­ment sinks to­wards au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism and vi­o­lates the ba­sic hu­man rights of the protest­ing farm­ers, we re­quest that you con­demn the re­cent at­tacks on pro­tes­tors and call on In­dia to re­spect ba­sic de­mo­c­ra­tic val­ues and the right to peace­ful protest.”

“As Canada’s Sikhs con­tinue to watch the sit­u­a­tion in In­dia with hor­ror, we are hope­ful that Canada will live up to its rep­u­ta­tion as a hu­man rights leader and en­cour­age In­dia to en­gage with the pro­test­ers in di­a­logue.”

The use of state vi­o­lence to si­lence protest and dis­sent must not be tol­er­ated. Never, ever. Any­where.