By Aysha Khan | Analyst News |
When a group of masked gunmen shot and killed a Sikh leader in the parking lot outside his Canadian gurdwara in June, Sikhs throughout North America knew instantly the brazen murder of the gurdwara president and activist was no random drive-by shooting.
Many, including his own family, suspected Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killers had been hired to carry out an extrajudicial execution by the Indian state. Three months later, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced “credible allegations” of a “potential link” between “agents of the government of India” and Nijjar’s murder, there was a sense of relief — and a frisson of fear.
“For all these years, we were telling all these governments where we live that we are facing transnational repression in their countries,” says Swaranjit Singh Khalsa, a Sikh community leader and local city council member in Norwich, Connecticut. “And nobody would listen to us. And now it has come to the point that a young man died.”
Evidence is mounting that the Indian government is orchestrating a widespread, coordinated assassination campaign against Sikh activists on foreign soil. Human Rights Watch warns these latest developments suggest “a new and notorious leap in extrajudicial killings” by India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist government, which has labeled Nijjar and other Sikh activists as terrorists over their criticisms of the state and their advocacy for the creation of a separate Sikh state in Punjab, India, known as Khalistan.
“Even if you don’t have any connection to those people, it’s traumatizing because all they were doing is talking about the rights of the Sikhs,” Khalsa says. “They all wanted to work within the premises of law. It’s hard to digest some of these things. They will leave a deep wound to the community.”
Read the full story here.
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