Sikhs For Justice Rally Outside UN Headquarters
“Who is the terrorist?” “Who is the butcher?” “Who is the villain?” Sikhs for Justice advocates asked through a megaphone as around sixty protestors responded “Indian government!” to all three. The group stood on a large printed sign that said “Indian Terrorist State” in the colors of the Indian flag as they held signs advocating an independent Sikh nation.
Tuesday’s rally in front of the United Nations headquarters was organized by Sikh nationalist group Sikhs For Justice in response to an Indian military buildup in the Sikh homeland of Punjab. In the past few weeks, rising tensions between India and Pakistan has resulted in a stronger Indian military presence in Punjab, causing 3.5 million people across 2,000 villages close to the border to be evacuated.
SFJ is pressuring the UN to support a 2020 referendum which would grant the Sikh community in Punjab an independent state, Khalistan, whose name was emblazoned in yellow on some protesters’ flags. In a bid to bring the issue to the forefront, SFJ met with a representative of Uruguay, the country heading the UN Security Council in January 2017, informing the delegation of the “nefarious designs of the Indian government, using this proxy war with Pakistan to suppress the community which is asking for its right to self-determination,” said Gurpatwant Punnan, the group’s legal advisor.
The Sikh’s conflict with the Indian government can be traced back to Indian independence, but it was in 1984 that tensions came to a boiling point, when Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi led an assault against Sikh dissenters at the sacred Golden Temple in Punjab. The move ultimately lead to Gandhi’s assassination and an immediate backlash against Sikhs which killed over 3,000 in a deadly bout of ethnic cleansing.
“It’s a long battle,” said Punnan, who added that while India was considered a democracy, it “doesn’t have any democratic values.”
Punnan said the world had turned its back on a number of abuses against the Sikhs, who number some 20 million in India. For example, according to Movement Against State Repression, an NGO that works in Punjab, an estimated 50,000 Punjabi farmers have committed suicide between 1988 and 2010 due to rising land costs, an issue the Indian state has paid little attention to.
Punnan said that far from addressing criticisms, India had resorted to censorship, banning the SFJ’s Facebook page and website within the country. SFJ sued Facebook for complying with the move but lost because the group’s page “amounts to sedition charges in India,” Pannun said.
SFJ is a non-violent group seeking their right to a referendum, which is what India fears most, Pannun added.
For others at the rally like Navtej Singh, a US citizen whose lived in America since he was six months old, the “primary goal here is justice.” He said SFJ was fighting to help those whose rights had been violated by bringing international attention to their cause, even if it was years after the abuses occur.
Whether that will be effective remains to be seen. For now, SFJ is taking things step by step, meeting with the Ukrainian delegation on Wednesday to discuss its concerns.
