An assassination on Canadian soil

A Sunday evening on Father’s Day in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver. A man hurries home, where his family is waiting to celebrate the occasion. He climbs into his van, parked in front of the Sikh temple he runs. Two hooded men appear and riddle him with bullets.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, collapses. The murderers flee. Three months later, the case remains unresolved. Except that we were treated to a size index on Monday. And it was none other than the Prime Minister of Canada who provided it: the assassination was allegedly sponsored by New Delhi.

Suddenly, a bloody but relatively banal news item turned into an unprecedented diplomatic crisis. Justin Trudeau may have assured that he did not want to provoke India, the day after his explosive allegations in the House of Commons, that is exactly what happened. Relations between the two countries, already cold, are now frosty. The escalation of tensions was inevitable.

In the Commons, the condemnation was unanimous. “The involvement of any foreign government in the murder of a Canadian citizen [sur le] Canadian soil constitutes an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” said Justin Trudeau. Our citizens must be protected from extrajudicial killings, added Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Everyone agrees on that.

No one can accept this extreme interference: the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Besides that, the allegations of interference made against China or Iran are (almost) small beer.

But unlike these dictatorships, India, at last count, was still a democratic country. And we must not forget the context of this crisis: if relations between Narendra Modi and Justin Trudeau have reached freezing point, it is because the former accuses the latter of being far too soft, for far too long, towards an independence movement that took root on Canadian soil.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a Sikh separatist leader, who campaigned for the creation of Khalistan, an independent state in the Punjab region of northern India. He had every right to do so.

But for New Delhi, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was not just that.

For New Delhi, he had plotted to assassinate a Hindu priest in Punjab. An Interpol notice described him as a “key conspirator” in a bomb attack on a Punjab cinema in 2007. He even set up a training camp in British Columbia to prepare for attacks in India…

In short, for the Indian government, Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a terrorist. And Canada let him do it.

Khalistan terrorists and extremists “have found refuge in Canada and continue to threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India,” denounced the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The Canadian government’s inaction on this issue is a long-standing and ongoing concern. »

In the 1970s and 1980s, the insurrection of the Sikh minority in India left thousands dead before being bloodily suppressed. Since then, the Sikhs of Punjab seem to have moved on. As if the dream of independence there had been annihilated.

But the dream is not dead everywhere. It is now supported by part of the diaspora, in Europe, the United States and, above all, in Canada, which has the largest Sikh community in the world outside India: 770,000 Canadians claim to follow this religion.

In the suburbs of Vancouver and Toronto, the pro-Khalistan movement, although no longer what it once was, appears to be experiencing a resurgence, some community members note.

There have been some, shall we say, regrettable incidents. In gatherings, on the walls of Sikh temples, we saw the portrait of Talwinder Singh Parmar, who instigated the attack on the Air India flight leaving from Toronto: 329 dead in 1985. To this day, he This is the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. Making this man a hero in Canada is the equivalent of venerating Osama bin Laden in the United States.

At a fashion show in Brampton in June, a model perched on a float wore a white sari stained with blood. Along the five kilometer parade, people applauded the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

A month later, hundreds of people demonstrated against the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in front of the Indian consulate in Toronto. Some held signs proclaiming “KILL INDIA” in large letters.

In short, when India criticizes Canada for not protecting its diplomats in the face of intimidation by Sikh separatists, it is perhaps not entirely delusional…

But she is probably exaggerating. Many Sikhs accuse New Delhi of spreading false information about those who are campaigning in a completely peaceful manner. For them, the assassination of Mr. Najjir had a clear objective: to make the Sikhs of the diaspora tremble. Make them understand that they are not safe anywhere. Nip their dream of independence in the bud.

The Indian strategy, if it proves to be real, could however be counterproductive, warn diaspora leaders. Far from discouraging them, the assassination of Mr. Nijjar risks encouraging young people in the community to revive the pro-Khalistan movement for good. If this happens, Canada could truly become a haven for extremists.