India criticizes Canada for observing minute of silence for ‘terrorist’

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The Indian government is attacking Canada after the House of Commons granted a minute of silence to a man New Delhi considered a wanted terrorist.

On the afternoon of June 18, the assembled House of Commons observed a minute of silence to mark the first anniversary of the shooting death of Sikh separatist figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia.

Speaker Greg Fergus announced the minute’s silence, saying it had been accepted by “all parties in the House” before inviting MPs to stand “in memory of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, murdered in Surrey, in British Columbia, one year ago today.”

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An official parliamentary video then shows government and opposition MPs rising in silent commemoration.

At a press briefing last week, an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the minute’s silence amounted to “giving political space to extremism and the glorification of violence.”

Although the move went virtually unnoticed in Canada, it received widespread media coverage in India, where Nijjar was a terror suspect wanted in connection with a 2007 movie theater bombing in Punjab. Since 2016, Indian intelligence has also publicly accused Nijjar of running terrorist training camps in Mission, British Columbia.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited India in 2018, Nijjar was on a list of nine suspected terrorists given to him by then Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Although the RCMP has not confirmed whether it ever acted on India’s warnings, at the time of Nijjar’s death he was on a no-fly list and his bank accounts were frozen by authorities Canadians.

At a news conference Thursday in Vancouver, Punjabi-language journalist Gurpreet Sahota asked Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland why Nijjar was commemorated by parliamentarians when he was subject to financial and flight restrictions. moment of his death.

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Freeland responded that the gesture was intended to recognize “the murder of a Canadian in Canada…and that is completely unacceptable.” She then praised Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his conviction of the murder.

“I think we should all feel safer knowing that (Trudeau) will stand up for Canadians and fight against the murderers of Canadians,” she said.

Nijjar was shot dead last year in a coordinated attack outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey. Last month, RCMP arrested three Indian nationals in connection with the killing, and they now face first-degree murder charges.

In September, Nijjar’s murder would become the center of a public breakdown in relations between India and Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of masterminding Nijjar’s assassination.

“Canadian security agencies are actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between Indian government agents and the murder of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons.

Canada has never publicly provided evidence to that effect, but in November an unsealed U.S. indictment laid out details of an alleged assassination ring operated by agents of the Indian government. The indictment includes testimony from a police informant who allegedly alluded to Nijjar’s murder in Surrey.

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Last week, Nijjar supporters also marked the anniversary by massing outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver, flying Khalistan flags and staging a mock trial and execution of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Nijjar has always denied allegations of Indian terrorism and said his support for Khalistan’s independence was purely peaceful.

In 2016, he told Postmedia: “All these allegations are bullshit. I’ve lived here for 20 years, right? Look at my file. There is nothing. I’m a hard worker.”

The parliamentary moment of silence came just five days before the anniversary of the 1985 Air India bombing, a terrorist attack staged by Sikh extremists that remains the deadliest mass murder in history from Canada.

It is for this reason that Canada has designated June 23 as the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism.

Air India’s anniversary did not result in a minute’s silence in the House of Commons before Parliament adjourned for its summer recess last Wednesday. Its only mention in parliamentary records came on June 18 by Liberal MP Chandra Arya, who used the anniversary to warn that Canada was failing to contain “the dark forces” that were causing it.

“Unfortunately, many Canadians are unaware that even today, the ideology responsible for this terrorist attack is still alive among a few people in Canada,” he said.

In a statement Sunday, Trudeau said the Air India bombing “reminds us of the senseless violence that terrorism perpetuates and our shared responsibility to unequivocally condemn terrorism.”

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