Canadian Media’s Attack on Sikhs – Part II (Editorial)

Truth behind the Disinformation Campaign
Panthic Weekly – www.panthic.org

‘The only way India could disrupt support for the Khalistan movement in Canada was by disgracing the Sikhs in the minds of other Canadians.’
-Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew (Authors of SOFT TARGET: How The Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada)

Surrey, B.C. – As various Canadian news agencies continue to spew biased and fallacious reports aimed at defaming the Surrey Nagar Kirtan and propagating erroneous claims that Shaheed Bhai Talwinder Singh Parmar was the ‘mastermind’ of the Air India tragedy, Panthic Weekly will now provide insights into the truth that lies behind the disinformation campaign to malign the Sikh people and further deny justice to the victims’ families.

Following the June 1984 Indian army attack on Darbar Sahib along with 74 other Gurdwaras, and the November 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms; which combined claimed the lives of over 30,000 innocent Sikhs, the eyes of the international community were directed at the gross human rights violations being committed against the minority Sikh community by the so called ‘world’s largest democracy.’ Various congressmen and parliament members from the US, Canada and the UK were raising questions about the plight of the Sikhs in India and the movement for greater Sikh autonomy and the creation of the state of Khalistan was galvanized throughout the globe. Former Tory MP Lome Greenaway of British Columbia addressed the House of Commons on June 13, 1985: “Mr. Speaker, last week marked the first anniversary of the storming of the Golden Temple…For a year the Punjab State has been under martial law, and communication has been difficult. Many are concerned that serious transgressions of human rights have occurred and continue to take place in Punjab. Such organizations as the International Red Cross and Amnesty International have been denied entrance to this State. The citizens of my riding are concerned.”

In order to destabilize the momentum that the Sikhs in Canada and other western countries were gaining in the international community following the 1984 genocide, the Government of India (GOI) was determined to demonize the Sikhs, even if it meant killing its own citizens. As Zuhair Kashmeri and Brian McAndrew, the authors of Soft Target put it, ‘The only way India could disrupt support for the Khalistan movement in Canada was by disgracing the Sikhs in the minds of other Canadians.’ The Indian regime had demonstrated its willingness to kill its own citizens for the sake of political expediency on numerous occasions. The Emergency Rule of the late 1970’s – when Indira Gandhi declared martial law and had thousands of Indian citizens tortured and killed- is a key case and point to demonstrate this fact, as was the carnage of 1984. One year after the Indian army assault on Darbar Sahib, the Indian government carried out one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in aviation history, killing 329 innocent people, many of whom were Indian citizens. Immediately after the attack, the GOI began its disinformation campaign to frame the Sikhs and shift the focus away from the gross human rights violations taking place in Punjab. The blame for this heinous crime was placed on the Sikhs and the eye of the international community shifted from the genocide of the Sikhs in India and the draconian law being enforced there, to the tragedy over the Atlantic Ocean. In both instances, the victims were innocent people.

GOI Pressure on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Defamation of Shaheed Bhai Talwinder Singh Parmar

The Mounties had lived up to their motto of always getting their man- but for what purpose? The arrests deflected some of the heat away from the task force and allowed it to continue with its investigation, which continues to this day at a cost well in excess of $60 million and mounting.’

-extracted from SOFT TARGET: How The Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada

In the past several weeks biased reporters such as Terry Milewski (CBC News), who has an infamous reputation for his bigoted attitude towards Canadian Sikhs, made spurious claims insinuating that Bhai Talwinder Singh Parmar was the ‘mastermind’ of this tragedy by citing unfounded assertions of the RCMP, who ever since the onset of the case has never been able to produce any concrete evidence linking Talwinder Singh Parmar to the bombings.

Indeed this is not the first time the RCMP police officials have succumb to pressure from the GOI to place the blame for this heinous crime on the Sikhs. Directly after the terrorist attack, the GOI was actively pressurizing the RCMP to pin the blame on ‘Sikh terrorists’ in order to malign the Sikh Cause which was in full swing in Canada, and as the reference above indicates they complied with the pressure. The gross negligence and incompetence of the RCMP throughout the trial has come at price of the reputation of the Sikh people and true justice being delivered to the real culprits behind this horrendous crime against Canadian citizens. In 2005 Justice Ian Josephson confirmed that the evidence that the prosecution was using to implicate the Sikhs in this crime was fabricated and unfounded.

Representatives from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) were able to recognize that the GOI had penetrated the Canadian investigation and pin pointed the GOI connection to bombings as the following illustrates.

‘The CSIS investigators slowly became convinced that the Indian intelligence service may have played a role in the bombings. And the further they probed, the more their suspicions grew………

So convinced had CSIS become of the GOI connection that, at one Air-India task force meeting, a CSIS agent had seriously suggested that “if you really want to clear the incidents quickly, take vans to the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, load up everybody and take them down for questioning. We know it and they know it that they are involved.’

-extracted from SOFT TARGET: How The Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada

Déjà vu- 1985 All Over Again

Malik pressured the Globe to publish this story, adding that it could be used to make a stronger case for blaming the Air-India and Narita bombings on the Babbar Khalsa leader. Malik also decried the Canadian system of justice for failing to come up with a quick solution to the bombings. “In India we would have had a confession by now. You people have too many civil and human-rights laws,” he complained.

-Surinder Malik, Indian consul general in Toronto (1985) from SOFT TARGET: How The Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada

Evidently the Indian officials in Canada are once again attempting to pressurize the Canadian news agencies into publishing falsified claims pinning the blame for the attack on Bhai Talwinder Singh Parmar just as they did immediately after the terrorist act. A day after the bombings the Globe and Mail publised an article by the Indian consul general in Toronto, Surinder Malik, which attempted to point the blame for the attack on the Sikhs. CSIS investigators were curious as to how Malik was able to explain the details of the attack only sixteen hours after the explosions had occurred.

‘Curiously, Malik knew more details about the two blasts than did the police investigators….Malik said that while one of the suspects was booked to Japan, the other was booked to Toronto and onwards to Bombay. He also said that the two checked their bomb-laden bags but did not board the flight themsleves. In sum, Malik had painted a scenario of the double sabotage operation that was a near perfect account of what the Mounties would take weeks to fathom.

Malik continually fed the Globe information pointing to Sikh terrorists as the source of the bombs. He was behind another story six days after the crash, this one headlined “Air-India pilot reported given parcel by Sikh.”….’

-extracted from SOFT TARGET: How The Indian Intelligence Service Penetrated Canada

Following the sensationalist news reports by Canadian news agencies at the behest of the Indian consul in Vancouver and Indian High Commission in Ottawa, the Sikhs are having to deal with the disinformation campaign that began in 1985 all over again.

Presumption of Innocence- A Fundamental Right

Obviously the incometance of Terry Milewski and these other so called ‘journalists’ lies in their ineptitude in recognizing fundamental legal rights outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which states under section 11(d)-

“Any person charged with an offence has the right … to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal”.

This legal right entails that no person shall be be considered guilty until finally convicted by a court. The burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which has to convince the court that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In principle, the defense does not have to prove anything.

The Canadian media and the RCMP have instead opted for the authoritarian model with the presumption of guilt with regards to Bhai Talwinder Singh Parmar. Instead of recognizing this fundamental legal right, they have immorally placed the burden of proof of innocence on Parmar who is no longer able to defend himself since he was murdered by Indian police in 1992. If Parmar was in fact a wanted ‘terrorist’ then why did the Indian authorities not take him to trial? The Indian police admitted that he was in their custody, but instead of bringing him to trial, Parmar became a victim of India’s draconian law and was butchered in an extra judicial killing. Indian authorities cremated the body without notifying the Parmar family or the Canadian government, and despite the gruesome nature of his execution, the Canadian government never asked India for a full investigation.

It’s paramount for the public to realize that the unfounded and ludicrous claims being propagated by the GOI and various Canadian news agencies claiming that Parmar was the ‘mastermind’ of the bombings are based on the unproved assertions of the RCMP – which is not a court of law, and that these false claims have not been proven in the Canadian Judicial System. The sole agenda behind this disinformation campaign has been to further malign the Sikh Community in Canada and throughout the world and to suggest that the Sikhs are responsible for this crime against humanity and to stigmatize and censor the Surrey Nagar Kirtan.

In the next issue Panthic Weekly will respond and deliver a message on behalf of the global Sikh community to several misinformed politicians and MP’s who have been mislead by the disinformation campaign.

- Panthic Weekly Editors