[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 18, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1906-E1907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SONIA GANDHI SHOULD NOT SPEAK ON NONVIOLENCE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 18, 2007

  Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, I was distressed to learn that the United 
Nations invited Sonia Gandhi to speak on nonviolence next month. She is 
the leader of the Congress Party, which has presided over massive 
atrocities against Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, and other minorities.
  Mrs. Gandhi is Catholic. How can she speak on nonviolence when her 
party presides over a country in which nuns have been raped and forced 
to drink their own urine, priests have been murdered, Christian schools 
have been burned to the ground, and prayer halls have been vandalized?
  It was Mrs. Gandhi's party that carried out the Golden Temple 
massacre that killed so many thousands of innocent Sikhs, including 
young boys ages 8 to 13. Her party presided

[[Page E1907]]

over the Delhi massacres in which over 20,000 Sikhs were murdered while 
the Sikh police were locked in their barracks.
  It was Beant Singh, a Congress Party Chief Minister, who presided 
over the murders of over 50,000 Sikhs while he was in office. No one 
from that party has the moral authority to speak on nonviolence, 
especially when there are so many better spokespersons, such as the 
Dalai Lama, who will be in America to receive an award right after Mrs. 
Gandhi's speech.
  Madam Speaker, the Council of Khalistan wrote an excellent letter to 
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which follows.

                                             Council of Khalistan,
                                               September 12, 2007.
     Hon. Ban Ki-moon,
     Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammerskjold 
         Plaza, New York, NY.
       Dear Secretary General Ban: It has come to my attention 
     that you are having Sonia Gandhi speak to the United Nations 
     on nonviolence on October 2. Mrs. Gandhi has no moral 
     standing to be discussing this subject. I urge you to find 
     someone else. Perhaps the Dalai Lama, who will be in the 
     United States the following weekend to receive an award, 
     would be a good choice. There are other people more qualified 
     than Mrs. Gandhi, as well.
       How could you pick the head of India's Congress Party for 
     this talk? India is one of the most violent countries in the 
     world. According to the Punjab State Magistracy, over 250,000 
     Sikhs have been murdered at the hands of the Indian 
     government. Between 1993 and 1995, according to the United 
     States Department of State, the Indian government paid out 
     over 41,000 cash bounties to police officers for killing 
     Sikhs. A report by the Movement Against State Repression 
     (MASR) reveals that over 52,000 Sikhs are being held as 
     political prisoners without charge or trial. Some have been 
     in illegal custody since 1984!
       Amnesty International reports that tens of thousands of 
     other minorities are being held as political prisoners as 
     well. In addition, the regime has kil1ed 300,000 Christians 
     in Nagaland, more than 90,000 Kashmiri Muslims and tens of 
     thousands of Muslims and Christians in the rest of the 
     country, and tens of thousands of Assamese, Bodos, Dalits 
     (the dark-skinned aboriginal people of South Asia, referred 
     to as ``Untouchables''), Manipuris, Tamils, and others.
       The Gandhi family were perhaps the most cruel of Indian 
     rulers; it was Mrs. Gandhi's mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, 
     who suspended democracy and imposed martial law 
     (dictatorship) on the country. It was the Congress Party 
     under Indira Gandhi, then under Mrs. Gandhi's husband, Rajiv 
     Gandhi, who succeeded Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister, that 
     the government carried out the brutal attack on the Golden 
     Temple in Amritsar, the center and seat of the Sikh religion, 
     in June 1984, as well as 224 other Gurdwaras (Sikh places of 
     worship) throughout Punjab. Sikh leaders Sant Jarnail Singh 
     Bhindranwale, General Shabeg Singh, and others, as well as 
     over 20,000 Sikhs were killed in these attacks. The Sikh holy 
     scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, written in the time of the 
     Sikh Gurus, was shot full of bullet holes by the Indian Army. 
     Over 100 young Sikh boys ages 8 to 13 were taken out into the 
     courtyard and asked if they supported Khalistan, the 
     independent Sikh state. When they answered with the Sikh 
     religious incantation ``Bole So Nihal'' they were summarily 
     shot to death.
       After Indira Gandhi was killed, Rajiv Gandhi said, ``When a 
     tree falls, the Earth shakes.'' Then he locked the Sikh 
     Police in their barracks while the government murdered 
     another 20,000 Sikhs in Delhi and the surrounding areas in 
     the massacres of November 1984. Sikhs were burned alive, Sikh 
     businesses were burned, Sikhs were chained to trucks. The 
     driver for Baba Charam Singh, a Sikh religious leader, was 
     killed by tying his legs to jeeps which then drove off in 
     different directions.
       Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra looked at the records of the 
     cremation grounds at Patti, Tarn Taran, and Durgiana Mandar 
     and documented at least 6,018 secret cremations of young Sikh 
     men ages 20-30. These young Sikhs were arrested by the 
     police, tortured, murdered, then declared unidentified and 
     secretly cremated. Their bodies were not even returned to 
     their families. They have never officially been accounted 
     for. The Punjab Human Right Commission estimates that about 
     50,000 such secret cremations have occurred.
       For exposing this horrendous atrocity, Sardar Khalra was 
     abducted by the police on September 6, 1995 whi1e he was 
     washing his car, then murdered in police custody. The only 
     witness to his kidnapping, Rajiv Singh Randhawa, has been 
     repeatedly harassed by the police. Once he was arrested for 
     trying to hand a petition to the then-British Home Minister, 
     Jack Straw. in front of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
       Police SSP Swaran Singh Ghotna tortured and murdered Akal 
     Takhl Jathedar Gurdev Singh Kaunke and has never been 
     punished for doing so. K.P.S. Gill, who was responsible for 
     the murders of over 150,000 Sikhs in his time as Director 
     General of Police, is still walking around scot-free. He was 
     even involved in leading the Indian Olympic field hockey 
     team. His trip to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 was protested 
     by the Sikh community in the United States, which is over 
     half a million strong, but he was allowed to come to the 
     Olympics on an Olympic Committee visa. Immediately after the 
     Olympic hockey game, he was shipped back to Punjab as a 
     threat to peace and an affront to the Sikh community. 50 
     members of the U.S. Congress from both parties wrote to the 
     President protesting his appearance in the United States.
       Unfortunately, other minorities have also suffered greatly 
     under the boot of Indian repression. In March 2002, 5,000 
     Muslims were killed in Gujarat while police were ordered to 
     stand by and let the carnage happen, in an eerie parallel to 
     the Delhi massacre of Sikhs in November 1984 in which Sikh 
     police officers were locked in their barracks while the 
     state-run television and radio called for more Sikh blood.
       Christians have suffered under a wave of repression since 
     Christmas 1998. An Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and 
     his two young sons, ages 8 and 10, were burned to death while 
     they slept in their jeep by a mob of Hindu militants 
     connected with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), an 
     organization formed in support of the Fascists. The mob 
     surrounded the burning jeep and chanted ``Victory to 
     Hannuman,'' a Hindu god. None of the mob has ever been 
     brought to justice; instead the crime has been blamed on one 
     scapegoat. Mr. Staines's widow was thrown out of the country 
     after the incident. An American missionary, Joseph Cooper of 
     Pennsylvania, was expelled from India after being beaten so 
     severely that he had to spend a week in the hospital. None of 
     the persons responsible for beating Mr. Cooper has been 
     prosecuted. Churches have been burned. Christian schools and 
     prayer halls have been attacked and vandalized, priests have 
     been murdered, nuns have been raped, all with impunity. 
     Police broke up a Christian religious festival with gunfire.
       Amnesty International has not been allowed into Punjab 
     since 1978. Even Castro's Cuba has allowed Amnesty into the 
     country more recently. What is India hiding?
       My organization, the Council of Khalistan, is leading the 
     Sikh struggle for freedom and sovereignty. Working with the 
     Congress of the United States, we have internationalized the 
     struggle for freedom for Sikhs and all the people of South 
     Asia since the Council of Khalistan's inception on October 7, 
     1987, the day that the Sikh Nation declared its independence 
     from India. We have worked to preserve the accurate history 
     of the Sikhs and the repression of minorities by India by 
     preserving the information in the Congressional Record. We 
     continue to work for freedom for the Sikh Nation. Self-
     determination is the essence of democracy.
       We cannot accept the leader of the Congress Party, the 
     party that carried out the bulk of these atrocities, speaking 
     to an organization like the United Nations on a subject like 
     non-violence, especially when there are much better 
     spokespersons available. I cannot urge you strongly enough to 
     cancel this appearance.
       Thank you in advance for your attention to this situation 
     and helping the people of South Asia.
           Sincerely,
                                         Dr. Gurmit, Singh Aulakh,
     President, Council of Khalistan.

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