[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 34 (Thursday, March 21, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E426]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   SIKH ACTIVIST DETAINED IN CANADA AND BRITAIN AT BEHEST OF INDIAN 
                               GOVERNMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 20, 2002

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, Dr. Bhagwan Singh Sandhu, a 
leader of the Sikh Students Federation, was detained at the airports in 
Vancouver and in London last month, apparently at the behest of the 
Indian government. According to information I have received, Dr. Sandhu 
was detained overnight and interrogated by Canadian intelligence agents 
who were in constant contact with Indian officials in Delhi. According 
to Dr. Sandhu, he was told that he was a terrorist, yet no evidence to 
support this claim was produced by authorities in Canada. The same 
thing apparently happened to him on his arrival in London. All records 
of his interrogation were retained by the Indian regime.
  Mr. Speaker, the Indian Government appears to be trying to capitalize 
on the world's heightened concerns about terrorism to harass innocent 
Sikhs beyond its own borders. In the case of Dr. Sandhu, it appears 
that India manipulated our friends in Canada and Great Britain so that 
they would detain Dr. Sandhu. The Council of Khalistan has issued an 
excellent press release on the detention of Dr. Sandhu. It is very 
informative. I would like to place it in the Record at this time.

             [From the Council of Khalistan, Mar. 11, 2002]

   Sikh Activist Arrested in Canada and England at Behest of Indian 
                               Government


                India Terrorizing Sikhs internationally

       Washington, D.C., March 11, 2002.--Dr. Bhagwan Singh 
     Sandhu, a leader of the Sikh Student Federation, was arrested 
     at the Vancouver airport on February 12 on the instructions 
     of the Indian government. Canadian intelligence agents 
     interrogated Dr. Sandhu while they were in constant touch 
     with Indian intelligence in Delhi. They offered no evidence 
     of any involvement by Dr. Sandhu in any terrorist activity in 
     India or any other country. Yet he was labeled a terrorist by 
     the Canadian intelligence operatives. They locked him in a 
     cold, small cell with only a cement bench to lie down on. The 
     following evening, February 13, he was put on a plane to 
     London.
       When Dr. Sandhu arrived in London, the British, acting at 
     the behest of the Indian government arrested him. He was 
     interrogated and searched, then held in jail overnight. He 
     was then sent back to India. The Indian government kept all 
     the papers related to his arrest and detention. When he 
     arrived in India, he was arrested again. He had to get 
     medical attention due to his injuries from his arrests. His 
     letters of protests to the Canadian, British, and Indian 
     authorities have gone unanswered.
       ``This arrest shows the true face of Indian secularism,'' 
     said Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of 
     Khalistan, the organization that leads the Sikh Nation's 
     struggle for independence. ``These illegal arrests show that 
     the Hindu nationalists will reach anywhere to destroy Sikhs 
     and other minorities,'' he said. ``They attacked the Golden 
     Temple in 1984. They have attacked Christian churches, 
     schools, and prayer halls. It has been an ongoing pattern of 
     repression,'' he said.
       ``It is shameful that the Canadian and British governments 
     have gone along with India's repression by illegally 
     arresting and harassing Dr. Sandhu,'' said Dr. Aulakh. ``Dr. 
     Sandhu is a victim of India's tyrannical, fanatical drive to 
     eliminate all minority populations in the service of 
     rampaging Hindu cultural imperialism,'' he said. ``It is 
     clear that the agents at the airports in Vancouver and London 
     were working at the behest of the brutal Indian government, 
     perhaps at its direction since they were apparently in 
     constant contact with Delhi.''
       The Indian government has murdered over 250,000 Sikhs since 
     1984. Over 75,000 Kashrairi Muslims have been killed since 
     1988. More than 200,000 Christians have been killed since 
     1947, along with tens of thousands of Dalits, Tamils, 
     Assamese, Bodos, Manipuris, and other minorities. A report 
     issued last year shows that 52,268 Sikh political prisoners 
     are held in Indian jails, as well as tens of thousands of 
     others. On February 28, 42 Members of the U.S. Congress wrote 
     to President Bush, asking him to work to get these political 
     prisoners freed. Since Christmas 1998, Christians have felt 
     the brunt of the attacks. Priests have been murdered, nuns 
     have been raped, churches have been burned, Christian schools 
     and prayer halls have been destroyed, and no one has been 
     punished for these acts. Militant Hindu fundamentalists 
     allied with the RSS, the pro-Fascist parent organization of 
     the ruling BJP, burned missionary Graham Staines and his two 
     young sons to death.
       Last year, a cabinet member said that everyone living in 
     India must be a Hindu or be subservient to Hindus. In July 
     1997, Narinder Singh, a spokesman for the Golden Temple, told 
     National Public Radio, ``The Indian government, all the time 
     they boast that they're democratic, they're secular, but they 
     have nothing to do with a democracy, they have nothing to do 
     with a secularism. They try to crush Sikhs just to please the 
     majority.''
       ``The only way to escape this government-supported violence 
     and tyranny is for the Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and other 
     minorities to claim their freedom from India,'' Dr. Aulakh 
     said. ``That is the only way to prevent the Hindu theocracy 
     from wiping us out,'' he said. ``We must launch a Shantmai 
     Morcha (peaceful agitation) to liberate Khalistan,'' he said.
       ``Sikhs are a separate nation and ruled Punjab until 1849. 
     No Sikh leader has signed the Indian constitution. The people 
     of South Asia must have self-determination now,'' Dr. Aulakh 
     said. ``India is on the verge of disintegration, as Steve 
     Forbes predicted in the current issue of Forbes magazine,'' 
     he said. ``Khalistan will be free by 2008.''

     

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