Canadian Sikhs have staged protests outside India’s diplomatic missions, a week after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there may be a link between New Delhi and the killing of a Sikh separatist advocate in British Columbia.
Trudeau a week ago stood in parliament to say that domestic intelligence agencies were actively pursuing credible allegations tying New Delhi’s agents to the shooting of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, in June.
About 100 protesters in Toronto on Monday burned an Indian flag and struck a cardboard cut-out of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a shoe. About 200 protesters also gathered outside the Vancouver consulate.
“We are not safe back home in Punjab. We are not safe in Canada,” said Joe Hotha, a member of the Sikh community in Toronto.
“The Indians, they are terrorists. They killed our brother in Vancouver, so that’s why we are protesting here,” another Sikh protester, Harpar Gosal, said outside the Indian consulate in Toronto.
In Ottawa, fewer than 100 people gathered in front of the Indian high commissioner’s office and waved yellow flags marked with the world “Khalistan”, a reference to their support for making an independent state for Sikhs in India’s Punjab region, a cause Nijjar campaigned for.
“We are really thankful to Justin Trudeau. … We want no stone left unturned to get to the bottom of this cowardly act,” protester Reshma Singh Bolinas said in Ottawa. Canada should put pressure on India to “stop the killing of innocent people in future”, she said.
Canada is home to about 770,000 Sikhs, the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab, and in recent years, many demonstrations there have irked India.
India labelled Trudeau’s allegations “absurd” and warned travellers last week there were growing “anti-India activities” in Canada, urging “utmost caution”.
