By Rumneek Johal | Press Progress | Canada |
As Sikh Canadians continue to speak out against ongoing violations of human rights by the Indian government in the state of Punjab, many Sikhs are being targeted in coordinated harassment and misinformation campaigns.
Recently, Indian media outlets amplified unverified and baseless rumours linking a murder at a downtown Vancouver Starbucks to events in India. The rumours, which seem to have originated with anonymous Twitter accounts, falsely claimed the suspect in the stabbing was a “Sikh Khalistani radical.”
The Khalistan movement is a separatist movement that seeks to establish a sovereign state for Sikhs, who are religious minorities in India. The Indian government is currently undertaking a “mega crackdown” to help locate Amritpal Singh, a Sikh activist and separatist figure. The government has also arbitrarily detained a number of people including journalists and lawyers.
Former journalist Rena Heer, who attempted to correct misinformation targeting the Sikh community on Twitter, says coordinated misinformation campaigns are negatively impacting Sikhs in Canada.
“It’s very sustained. It’s relentless. It’s over long, long periods of time,” Heer told PressProgress. “And at some point or another, it’s going to have a harmful impact on our community, and more directly our children and our families.”
“What it does is it puts you as a small community, as a minority community, under a microscope. It casts this sort of atmosphere of mistrust around you. It opens you up to questions from people that you know around whether your community has extremists.”
Heer was responding to misinformation spread by Indian media and a anonymous Twitter accounts that exploited horrific video of 37-year-old father Paul Schmidt being stabbed to death outside of a Starbucks on Granville Street.
A number of articles made unsubstantiated claims that the second degree murder suspect, 32-year-old Inderdeep Singh Gosal, attended a protest outside the Indian High Commission prior to the attack.
There is no information confirming Gosal was ever at the protest, which took place on Saturday, March 25 – the stabbing attack took place a day later, on Sunday, March 26.
Vancouver Police have confirmed no details about the murder, stating only that they “do not believe the victim and suspect knew each other” and that the “circumstances that led up to the fatal stabbing remain under investigation.”
Despite this, Twitter accounts of verified Indian academics and journalists, repeated this unsubstantiated claim, later picked up by Indian media to link the murder to a “rally outside the Indian High Commission in Canada.”
Heer says that after trying to correct misinformation, she was flooded with hateful replies.
“I just kind of put it out there. I just couldn’t read the replies. And once I read it, it’s just constant repetition. The comments and replies are just very directly anti-Sikh,” said Heer. “(People) don’t know how hard the machine works to make sure it’s targeting us wherever we live.”
To read the full story, go here.
PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.
RELATED STORY:
India’s disinformation campaign against Canada’s Sikhs (Asia Samachar, 6 Feb 2021)
Farm laws: Fake social media profiles targeting Sikhs exposed – BBC (Asia Samachar, 24 Nov 2021)
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