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Current Events
With Balwant Singh
Sikhs Are Fighting Against Terrorism By The Indian State
NATIONAL POST
The following was authored by a concerned Sikh-Canadian academic, who wrote under the condition of anonymity, in rebuttal to a biased, bigoted, uninformed and poorly researched piece written by Jonathan Kay, entitled “Why are some Canadian Sikhs expressing solidarity with an unrepentant terrorist?“
There are many questions surrounding the stay of execution of of Balwant Singh, who was sentenced for his involvement in the 1995 assassination of Beant Singh - the former chief minister of Punjab who spear-headed the genocide against Sikhs in the region. But Balwant Singh's sentence has since been stayed.
Beant Singh gave police officers the authority to carry-out extrajudicial executions, targeting and killing innocent civilian Sikhs on the spot. This led to fake “encounter” killings, illegal detention, torture and rape.
Beginning in 1984, and continuing until his assassination, an estimated 9,000-30,000 Sikhs were murdered in Punjab. During Beant Singh’s reign, thousands of Sikhs were killed for being “suspicious,” despite claims that there were only approximately 300 armed Nationalist Sikhs.
After the death of Beant Singh in 1995, the senseless murders of Sikhs stopped.
Why is the Sikh population displaying insurmountable support and rallying to stop the execution of Balwant Singh, who many - parroting the Indian state's term - consider a 'terrorist'?
The fact of the matter is that Sikhs do not support terrorists or terrorism, but are looking for equal treatment and justice in the so-called secular democracy known as India.
Sikhs are a minority in India - and like other minorities, including Christians and Muslims - are often jailed without a court hearing, not allowed to fight their cases, given more severe penalties than their non-Sikh inmates, and given longer jail terms and intentionally delayed sentences.
In 1984, tens of thousands of Sikhs were killed in pogroms in Delhi, India's capital, and in 40 other cities around the country. There is ample evidence that the mobs were led by Indian politicians Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, but due to “technicalities,” their cases have been stayed.
These pogroms happened 28 years ago, but these people are allowed to walk free.
In 2003, Indian politician Narendra Modi - chief minister of India's Gujarat state - started pogroms that led to the killings of thousands of Muslims in his state. To this day, he walks free ... and continues to be the state's chief minister and is now eyeing a run as India's Prime Minister!
The minority Sikhs - 2% of the country's population - have long been oppressed by the Indian government. Corruption and discrimination have plagued Balwant Singh’s case and, as a result, there has been a public outcry for justice. It is often said that there is no justice for Sikh prisoners in India.
By displaying their support for Balwant Singh, Sikhs are expressing their desire that a single standard be applied to all people in India - in accordance with democratic norms and the rule of law.
Balwant Singh has always accepted responsibility for his crime and refused to appeal his conviction, which he did not defend. He accepts the death penalty. People are simply arguing that the government should not hang him, until they hang other people who have committed similar or worse crimes - to show the same commitment to human rights and the rule of law when the Indian state, its forces, its bureaucrats and its politicians commit heinous crimes against humanity.
The inconsistencies are too harsh to ignore.
Kishori Lal, the “Butcher of Trilokpuri,” was released, and now walks a free man, following three death sentences for going on a Sikh murdering spree in 1984. Today, many police officers and politicians who committed human rights violations and were involved in the Sikh genocide live freely and have worked their way up the political ladder.
It appears the only fate for a Sikh political prisoner is the hangman’s noose.
There are numerous other legitimate reasons why Balwant Singh should not be executed:
* There are 2 other Sikh men who were involved in the killing, their trials are still pending (conveniently still in jail and awaiting a fair trial for 17 years!) So how can one man be hung when the other cases are not officially over.
* There is an ongoing explosives case on Balwant Singh in Patiala Court; the Advocate General can issue a writ to the court to suspend the hanging until the pending case is solved.
* Balwant Singh was not the actual murderer of Beant Singh (the murderer died in the bombing); he was a conspirator. So why is he being executed after spending 17 years in jail?
We must ask ourselves, are these actions consistent with the values of a liberal democracy?
This is precisely why the Sikh population around the world is joining hands and supporting Balwant Singh. To us, he is a freedom fighter whose intent was not to kill innocents, but rather criminals, and to bring justice to Punjab.
If someone had successfully killed Hitler, would that man be considered a terrorist? Maybe by Hitler supporters.
When all hope of addressing the wrongs wrong had failed, Balwant Singh was left with no alternative. He did what the Indian government failed, or chose not, to do: He stopped the violence in Punjab! Balwant Singh and others took matters into their own hands, took down a tyrant and allowed the state of Punjab to live in peace.
If India wishes to try Balant Singh and hang him, it must hand down the same sentence to the many other men who murdered Sikhs in cold blood.
I am a Sikh and I can state unequivocally that we do not support terrorism.
The Sikhs of Canada and around the world support Balwant Singh for ridding the world of an evil man.
[Edited by sikhchic.com]
March 31, 2012
Conversation about this article
1: B. Singh (Canada), March 31, 2012, 12:20 PM.
One of the biggest issues I have with the article by Kay - to which this one is a rebuttal - is that he deliberately attempts to strip all context away from Balwant Singh's actions. His argument is simply, "human bomb = bad". But context matters; one cannot take a moral stand on a person's actions without also considering, and taking a stand on his reasons. If he thinks Balwant Singh was wrong, then it is necessary for him to explain why by referencing Beant's crimes and what he thinks should have been done instead. I also find it insulting that Kay refers to the government's crimes against Sikhs as "mistakes" made during a counter-insurgency. To call the deliberate and pre-meditated slaughter of thousands a mistake is an insult to the reader's intelligence - and no compliment to Kay's own. A typo is a mistake, what the government did is an atrocity.
2: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), March 31, 2012, 5:50 PM.
I admit that I have not read Kay's article but I'm assuming it is written along the same lines as other critique of Sikh separatist actions in Canada by the local, usually ill-informed media. B. Singh (Post 1) mentions this problem as their failure to examine the actions of Sikh freedom fighters in their context. One only has to look at the plethora of material on the Air India bombings written here in Canada which malign the entire community as terrorist sympathizers. This is further confounded by the fact that we live in the "age of terrorism" where the actions of individuals such as Balwant Singh are examined in a global rather than regional perspective. There is the illogical knee jerk reaction of individuals such as Kay who assume that all forms of struggle against established authority are rooted in terrorism and rampant violence. It is a down-right shame that the author of this article had to conceal his identity to basically say that massacring an entire community over the course of a decade is more than enough justification for an entire people to desire secure justice for themselves, and to put an end to tyranny.
3: Jagdish Singh (Calgaty, Alberta, Canada), March 31, 2012, 6:03 PM.
Anybody who lives in Canada and follows our media regularly would know that Jonathan Kay, Terry Milewski and Kim Bolan are not the bright lights of this country's journalism scene. They were hired as one-trick ponies, and they do what they're good at - spewing racist bigotry, with no resort to facts or intelligent thought. It's one of the costs of having freedom of the press ... and, painful though it is, we have to suffer through their occasional spouts of drivel. There is a reason why everyone in Canada turns to the foreign press for its intellectual nourishment.
4: N. Singh (Canada), March 31, 2012, 6:52 PM.
Here is the link to Kay's article http://www.theprovince.com/news/Sikh+terrorist+shouldn+anyone+hero/6378133/story.html. It is worth reading because it will give Sikhs worldwide an idea of the type of gutter journalism Sikh-Canadians have to put up with in the national press - albeit fed by local Indian 'diplomats'. Again the same race-hate inciting ploys are used: reference to the Air India crash (how is this relevant to Balwant Singh's case), subliminal messages aligning Sikhs with Muslims and by association being branded 'terrorists', reference to "Jew-killing Jihadi or spree killer" which I believe is again a deliberate attempt to align Balwant Singh's actions with the recent killings of innocent Jews in Toulouse, France on March 23 by a Muslim gunman. Also worth noting is that Jonathan Kay is "managing editor for comment at the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies". Readers are encouraged to google this foundation. It is a neo-conservative think-thank on a religious-jihadist war with Islam. It has strong pro Jewish backing with alleged connections to the defense industry. I have nothing against Jews or Israel but I fear our Jewish brothers are in for a rude awakening if they feel their interests lie with aligning themselves with India. Hitler's autobiography, "Mein Kampf" is a 'consistent best-seller' in India and in particular with the youth (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8660064.stm). Hitler's biggest fans today are in India ... Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray, the RSS and the BJP, being just a few of the better known ones. The saddest part of Jay's mischievous article is that it was published by the National Post, which is nothing but a Jewish mouthpiece which is widely known as willing to publish anything, ANYTHING, if it helps the Jewish/ Israeli cause.
5: Harinder (Uttar Pradesh, India), April 03, 2012, 1:21 PM.
Sikhs is the newest world religion on the planet, and can teach people of the world how to co-exist peacefully and harmoniously. We need not carry the historical baggage of mankind's pursuit of God. The Ultimate One who has created all of us, loves us all.