(Ottawa) Former Minister of National Defense Harjit Sajjan denies having ordered the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to prioritize evacuating Afghans of the Sikh faith during the fall of Kabul in August 2021. He claims to have been a supporter transmission, not a source of pressure.
The daily life The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that the minister personally intervened to remove a group of 225 people from the religious minority from the country to the detriment of Canadian citizens or Afghans with ties to Canada, such as interpreters, for example.
According to confidential Canadian military sources who were on the ground during the last evacuation flights, Afghans of the Sikh faith were not considered a priority, given their lack of ties with Canada, according to the publication.
“I have not ordered the Canadian Armed Forces to prioritize Sikhs,” Minister Sajjan said in a statement first released to Globe and Mailwhich his office then shared with other media outlets.
“This is bullshit (It’s total BS),” the minister said orally at a press briefing in Vancouver.
The man, who was deployed to Afghanistan three times while serving in the CAF, explained that he had relayed information to the chain of command about the Afghans of the Sikh faith who had taken refuge in a temple (gurdwara) in Kabul.
But “I did not order the CAF to undertake a rescue mission in a gurdwara or anywhere else,” Sajjan said. “My message to the NGO was the same as the CAF was giving directly to Afghan Sikhs through their own channels: move towards the airport,” he added.
He even went so far as to accuse the publication of drawing conclusions based on racist bias.
I can only assume that if I didn’t wear a turban, no one would question whether my actions were appropriate.
Harjit Sajjan, former Minister of National Defence
In a statement released Thursday, the Department of National Defence said all evacuation operations were conducted “in accordance with the directives of the Government of Canada and the Minister of National Defence.”
The orders “came from the chief of staff and his operational level commanders”, and the decisions were made taking into account the “risks associated with the execution of these operations”, the ministry added in the same email .
The Bloc calls for an investigation
The Sikhs in question were unable to be removed from Afghanistan in August 2021, as the Taliban regime regained control. However, they managed to flee on planes chartered by other governments, including India, several months later.
This does not, however, exonerate the minister, insists Bloc MP Christine Normandin. And to find out for sure, his successor Bill Blair must order the opening of an internal investigation. “This is the first thing that must be done,” she emphasizes.
Because in the immediate future, the counterattack by Harjit Sajjan, who accuses the Globe and Mail of having been blinded by racist prejudices, does not allow us to see things more clearly, believes the elected official: “It would have been a minimum to say: I will provide documents, we will answer the questions”.
The Conservative Party was provided with a generic statement accusing the Liberal government of having “failed” the CAF and of disrespecting its leadership “in procurement, recruiting or operations.”
The New Democratic Party had not reacted at the time of publishing these lines on Thursday afternoon.
A persecuted religious minority
Sikhs are a very small religious minority in Afghanistan, a predominantly Muslim country where they face discrimination. In March 2020, a targeted attack by Daesh (Islamic State armed group) in a gurdwara in Kabul caused at least 25 victims.
After the attack, “about 200 members of the Sikh community left the country for India, saying they left due to lack of security and insufficient government protection,” according to a Department of Defense report. American state.
PHOTO NALINDER NANU, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Sikh refugees from Afghanistan hold placards as they demand Pakistani and Afghan governments to secure Sikh and Hindu families and their places of worship, during a protest in Amritsar on August 27, 2020.
The seriousness of the situation prompted elected Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens to write to the federal Minister of Immigration at the time, Marco Mendicino, to urge him to create a special program to relocate Sikhs and Hindus in Canada.
Previous escapades
This is not the first time that Harjit Sajjan, who was demoted to International Development after the 2021 election, and now holds the Civil Protection portfolio, has found himself in trouble.
In 2017, he had to apologize after presenting himself as the architect of Operation Medusa. This, which took place in September 2006, was the largest Canadian combat operation since the Korean War.
The minister also faced criticism from opposition parties for demanding – and obtaining – the right to not be subject to security measures at Canadian airports before boarding a plane.
He had complained to some of his Cabinet colleagues that he sometimes received secondary searches of his turban after the alarm went off when he passed through passenger screening points before they entered the secure area of the airport. ‘airport.