In an 11-page re­port en­ti­tled “En­forc­ing si­lence: In­di­a’s War on Sikh So­cial Me­dia,” re­leased to­day in Ot­tawa, the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada has com­pre­hen­sively ex­am­ined the re­cent trend in In­dia of de­tain­ing po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists un­der the dread­ful Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties Pre­ven­tion Act, 1967 -UAPA and il­le­gally and sur­rep­ti­tiously ban­ning Sikh-cen­tric web­sites, YouTube chan­nels in Pun­jab and parts of In­dia.

THE SPEC­TRE OF REF­ER­EN­DUM 2020 -HARDLY HAP­PEN­ING IN PUN­JAB AND IN­DIA, but which has high­lighted the is­sue of Sikh sov­er­eignty and in­jus­tices to the Sikh com­mu­nity, looms large on the In­dian lead­er­ship and law en­force­ment agen­cies and in their knee-jerk re­ac­tions, they are re­sort­ing to dra­con­ian and un­de­mo­c­ra­tic mea­sures. The memo­r­ial ser­vices of June 6 this year for the mar­tyrs of the at­tack on Dar­bar Sahib in June 1984, has led to re­newed ‘state ter­ror­ism’ in Pun­jab. Dis­senters across In­dia face UAPA and other leg­is­la­tions for op­pos­ing poli­cies of the Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing CAA.

Hit­ting the nail on the head, the first para­graph of the WSO re­port states, “In­dian au­thor­i­ties are in­creas­ingly us­ing so­cial me­dia to tar­get and pros­e­cute Sikhs and mem­bers of other mi­nor­ity com­mu­ni­ties who ad­vo­cate on hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal is­sues. So­cial me­dia posts deemed crit­i­cal of In­dia or sup­port­ive of sep­a­ratist move­ments are re­ported for re­moval and in some cases, lead to in­di­vid­u­als be­ing de­tained and charged for ter­ror­ism-re­lated of­fences. In par­tic­u­lar, Sikhs ex­press­ing sup­port for Khal­is­tan are be­ing tar­geted.”

News web­site Sikh Siyasat was blocked in June 2020 within In­dia. www.sikhsiyasat.net and then sikhsiyasat.info have been blocked. News chan­nels Akaal Chan­nel, KTV and TV84 were blocked on YouTube. While Akaal Chan­nel is live again, the ban on the YouTube home­pages of TV84 and KTV con­tin­ues. Yes­ter­day, the Youtube chan­nel of Kha­las TV was hacked.

Plac­ing its view­point in per­spec­tive, WSO says, “Khal­is­tan is a con­struct that is un­der­stood in dif­fer­ent ways and is a source of ro­bust dis­course and de­bate amongst Sikhs world­wide. Dis­cussing or pro­mot­ing Khal­is­tan is within rec­og­nized free­doms of ex­pres­sion and po­lit­i­cal dis­course and should not be con­fused with ex­trem­ism or ter­ror­ism.”

Quot­ing hu­man rights de­fender and lawyer Jas­pal Singh Man­jh­pur, the WSO nar­rates “Around 175 Sikh youths have been ar­rested un­der UAPA dur­ing the cur­rent Con­gress gov­ern­ment since March 2017 and many of them are po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists who are hauled up merely to keep them be­hind bars for a longer pe­riod of time.”

“Around 175 Sikh youths have been ar­rested un­der UAPA dur­ing the cur­rent Con­gress gov­ern­ment since March 2017 and many of them are po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists who are hauled up merely to keep them be­hind bars for a longer pe­riod of time.”

Jas­pal Singh Man­jh­pur, Hu­man Rights De­fender and lawyer

A large num­ber of po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists have been de­tained un­der UAPA, many have been sent no­tices by the Na­tional In­ves­ti­ga­tion Agency -one of which Lovepreet Singh of San­grur com­mit­ted sui­cide a day ago.

The re­port states that “In re­cent weeks, In­dian au­thor­i­ties have at­tempted to si­lence Sikh voices on so­cial me­dia and to tar­get Sikhs who ad­vo­cate on hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal is­sues.” Re­leas­ing the re­port, WSO Pres­i­dent Tejin­der Singh Sidhu said, “In­dia is at­tempt­ing to si­lence dis­sent­ing voices and cen­sor Sikh so­cial me­dia con­tent. This is un­ac­cept­able.”

“We will con­tinue our en­gage­ment with all stake­hold­ers so that Sikh in­ter­ests are pro­tected. We will be shar­ing this re­port with so­cial me­dia stake­hold­ers so that they see the Sikh per­spec­tive,” he added.

The WSO re­port pro­vides a back­ground to on­line Sikh ac­tivism, dra­con­ian In­dian laws used to si­lence dis­sent and also re­views the de­ten­tions of Sikh youth that have ap­peared in the me­dia over the past months.

The sit­u­a­tion of un­law­ful de­ten­tions has be­come so grave that even the Jathedar of Akal Takht Sahib Gi­ani Harpreet Singh has taken no­tice of it and de­nounced ha­rass­ment, tor­ture and il­le­gal de­ten­tions. As re­ported in the me­dia, he has cat­e­gor­i­cally asked, “I have been get­ting many such calls from Sikh youths be­ing sum­moned by po­lice. How can link­ing or com­ment­ing on Face­book be a crime to sum­mon youth to the po­lice sta­tion if it is not spread­ing hate be­tween com­mu­ni­ties?”

A sec­tion of the Cana­dian so­cial me­dia, es­pe­cially those mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments in the Sikh world very eas­ily en­dorses the In­dian state view­point. To them, the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada sug­gests “so­cial me­dia plat­forms es­tab­lish a di­a­logue with the WSO and other Sikh stake­hold­ers to iden­tify Sikh his­tor­i­cal fig­ures be­ing re­ported for cen­sor­ship by In­dian au­thor­i­ties and to bet­ter un­der­stand is­sues such as Khal­is­tan and 1984.”

The re­port asks so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in Canada to con­sider whether In­di­a’s ac­tions are based on some pur­ported crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity or is only a sub­verted at­tempt to sup­press dis­sent­ing voices.

The re­port asks so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in Canada to con­sider whether In­di­a’s ac­tions are based on some pur­ported crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity or is only a sub­verted at­tempt to sup­press dis­sent­ing voices.

Ad­mon­ish­ing In­dia for tak­ing the dras­tic de­ci­sion of ban­ning so­cial me­dia plat­forms, the World Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Canada has sought that “where con­tent is re­stricted, there must be a clear mech­a­nism within so­cial me­dia plat­forms to ap­peal the de­ci­sion and have it re­viewed by a hu­man mod­er­a­tor well versed in the nu­ances of this topic.”

Pun­jab Op­po­si­tion leader Sukh­pal Singh Khaira, who has been lead­ing from the front the UAPA on­slaught in Pun­jab has said, “The Pun­jab gov­ern­ment and po­lice are fram­ing Sikh youth, es­pe­cially the poor and this does not por­tend well for the state.”

 

South Asia di­rec­tor of Hu­man Rights Watch -Meenakshi Gan­guly has aptly summed up ac­tions of In­dia say­ing, “At a time when gov­ern­ments around the world are re­leas­ing pris­on­ers be­cause of coro­n­avirus, it is ex­tra­or­di­nary that In­dian au­thor­i­ties want to jail ac­tivists who should never have been ar­rested.”