WASHINGTON – A Washington-based lobbyist for the Sikh cause Friday condemned the recent arrests of Sikh leaders, including Daljit Singh Bittu, in Indian Punjab, saying his people will not be deterred by the state repression to fight for their independence.
“Such Machiavellian tactics only steel the determination of the Sikh nation to give geographical shape to the Sikh daily prayer, of ‘Raj Karayga Khalsa’, into a democratic buffer state of Khalistan, located between India and Pakistan, West of the Jumna river and East of the Ravi and the Pakistan border,” Dr. Amarjit Singh, director of the Khalistan Affairs Centre, said in a statement.
Dr. Singh said that the current police terror has been unleashed to preempt the world-wide protests being organized by the Sikhs to commemorate the 25th anniversary of what he called the anti-Sikh pogrom triggered by the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
“During the four days long reign of terror in India, 25 years ago”, the statement said, “over ten thousand innocent Sikh men, women and children were murdered in Delhi, and other urban centres all over India, by workers of the ruling Congress party along with other Hindutva sections.
“These Congress party apparatchiks, went on a murder spree, under supervision of the local police”. But Dr. Singh said no one had been found guilty.
He said that Sikhs from all over the United States had staged a protest outside the United Nations on September 26 when the Indian external Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna, was addressing the UN General Assembly.
WASHINGTON – A Washington-based lobbyist for the Sikh cause Friday condemned the recent arrests of Sikh leaders, including Daljit Singh Bittu, in Indian Punjab, saying his people will not be deterred by the state repression to fight for their independence.
“Such Machiavellian tactics only steel the determination of the Sikh nation to give geographical shape to the Sikh daily prayer, of ‘Raj Karayga Khalsa’, into a democratic buffer state of Khalistan, located between India and Pakistan, West of the Jumna river and East of the Ravi and the Pakistan border,” Dr. Amarjit Singh, director of the Khalistan Affairs Centre, said in a statement.
Dr. Singh said that the current police terror has been unleashed to preempt the world-wide protests being organized by the Sikhs to commemorate the 25th anniversary of what he called the anti-Sikh pogrom triggered by the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
“During the four days long reign of terror in India, 25 years ago”, the statement said, “over ten thousand innocent Sikh men, women and children were murdered in Delhi, and other urban centres all over India, by workers of the ruling Congress party.
“These Congress party apparatchiks, went on a murder spree, under supervision of the local police”. But Dr. Singh said no one had been found guilty.
He said that Sikhs from all over the United States had staged a protest outside the United Nations on September 26 when the Indian external Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna, was addressing the UN General Assembly.
Courtesy: The Nation (Lahore)
