(Toronto) Portraits of Narendra Modi trampled, Indian flags burned: hundreds of Sikhs demonstrated Monday in front of India’s diplomatic missions in Canada, a week after Justin Trudeau’s shock declaration towards New Delhi.
“We are not safe here in Canada,” laments Joe Hotha, a member of the Sikh religious community in Toronto, in reference to the murder in June of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the West of the country.
Last Monday, the Canadian Prime Minister suggested before Parliament that New Delhi was involved in the assassination of this Sikh leader, triggering a major diplomatic crisis between the two nations.
“Our Prime Minister (Justin Trudeau) said everything in front of Parliament, there are no more excuses,” says Harpar Gosal, a Sikh Canadian from Toronto, alongside other demonstrators.
With the yellow flag of Khalistan in hand, this independent state that the Sikhs hope to create in the Punjab region, in the north of India, he came to demonstrate in front of the Indian consulate against “Indian terrorists”.
PHOTO COLE BURSTON, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Like him, several hundred Sikh Canadians gathered in Toronto, but also in Ottawa and Vancouver, to denounce the actions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Canada is home to the largest Sikh community in the world outside of India with 770,000 Canadians professing Sikhism in 2021, or 2% of the country’s population.
For its part, the Indian government described the Canadian accusations as “absurd” and denied “any act of violence in Canada”.
It also advised its nationals against traveling to certain Canadian regions “given the increase in anti-Indian activities” and “temporarily” stopped processing visa applications in Canada.
Since then, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been at their lowest point, marked by reciprocal expulsions of diplomats while Justin Trudeau has repeatedly called on Indian authorities to cooperate in the investigation.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead in June by two masked men in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he led in Surrey, near Vancouver, British Columbia. He died of his injuries on the spot.