Sikh Groups ask government to provide evidence on terror report

Several groups within Canada’s Sikh community have got together to ask the federal government to provide evidence to support a claim made in a recent terror assessment report that “Sikh extremism” was a current threat to the country.

The groups accused Ottawa of capitulating to the Indian government, which has repeatedly pushed a narrative that Canada is harbouring Sikh extremists, and suggested the report seemed more driven by politics than intelligence.

“Rather than defending the reputation of Canadian Sikhs and denying these baseless allegations, it appears that the Canadian government is content to capitulate to Indian demands to crack down on the Sikh activists,” said a statement from the Ontario Khalsa Darbar, based in Mississauga. The document drawing scrutiny is Public Safety Canada’s annual report on the terrorism threat to the country. A section on current threats lists “Sunni Islamist extremism” and “right-wing extremism” followed by “Sikh (Khalistani) extremism.” There had been no mention of Sikh extremism in previous years.

The 2018 report notes that while violent activities in support of an independent Sikh homeland (Khalistan) in India have fallen since the 1980s when terrorists carried out the bombing of an Air India flight, killing 331 people, “support for the extreme ideologies of such groups remains. For example, in Canada, two key Sikh organizations, Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation, have been identified as being associated with terrorism and remain listed terrorist entities under the Criminal Code.”

In a joint statement, the B.C. Sikh Gurdwaras Council and the Ontario Gurdwaras Committee, a coalition representing 30 places of worship, said the Sikh community had been maligned by the government’s “generalized” accusations, which were “irresponsible and could have wide standing effects on Sikhs throughout Canada.”

“We have to go back at least three decades to find anything. What’s happened in the last year for the Sikh community to be included? What context can they give us? Why now?” Moninder Singh, the B.C. council’s spokesman, is reported to have said.