Sikh genocide petition has no place in Canada | Full Comment | National Post
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff isn’t backing fellow Liberal MPs Andrew Kania and Sukh Dhaliwal, who read a petition in the House of Commons yesterday which asked Ottawa to formally recognize the 1984 sectarian violence in India as a “genocide.” The petition asks Ottawa to call upon the Indian government to take reasonable measures to bring to justice those responsible for the killings.
The people behind the petition want to honour the thousands of Sikhs who were killed in 1984, along with militants killed in the Golden Temple attack earlier that year. That has Michael Ignatieff a little uneasy.
Mr. Ignatieff publicly denounced the petition, and doesn’t feel that the term genocide is appropriate.
“It is used here to provoke a charged, visceral response which will not bring Canadians closer to mutual understanding and closure in regard to these tragic events,” Mr. Ignatieff said in a statement. He promised that the Liberal party will “never stand with those who seek to polarize communities, or aggravate the tensions around long-standing conflicts that divided us in other lands.”
You have to give Mr.Ignatieff credit where it’s due. He smells a rat, and he isn’t far off the mark.
The same people who want to honour the martyrs of the Golden Temple are the ones who support the terrorists responsible for the mass murder of 329 people on Air India Flight 182. This is an attack for which nobody has yet been brought to justice over, and the only terrorist convicted in relation to it had his perjury trial delayed over accusations of jury racism.
We know that the real racists are the pro-separatist Sikhs who, like the Tamil Tigers, put the cause of their civil war ahead of Canadians. Politicians would be well advised to steer well clear of this group, which recently made headlines when they threatened Ujjal Dosanjh in April.
In the annual Vaisakhi parade this year the controversial “martyr” float made a return appearance, similar to what the petition organizers want to do by commemorating Operation Blue Star, the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 in which Sikh separatist terrorists were killed.
The last thing we need is to encourage expatriate Sikhs to lobby our government into getting involved in matters of foreign sectarian violence. If we learned anything from the Sri Lankan Tamils, it’s to not get mixed up in old world politics and feuds.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com...etition-has-no-place-in-canada/#ixzz0qUoMZw4R
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff isn’t backing fellow Liberal MPs Andrew Kania and Sukh Dhaliwal, who read a petition in the House of Commons yesterday which asked Ottawa to formally recognize the 1984 sectarian violence in India as a “genocide.” The petition asks Ottawa to call upon the Indian government to take reasonable measures to bring to justice those responsible for the killings.
The people behind the petition want to honour the thousands of Sikhs who were killed in 1984, along with militants killed in the Golden Temple attack earlier that year. That has Michael Ignatieff a little uneasy.
Mr. Ignatieff publicly denounced the petition, and doesn’t feel that the term genocide is appropriate.
“It is used here to provoke a charged, visceral response which will not bring Canadians closer to mutual understanding and closure in regard to these tragic events,” Mr. Ignatieff said in a statement. He promised that the Liberal party will “never stand with those who seek to polarize communities, or aggravate the tensions around long-standing conflicts that divided us in other lands.”
You have to give Mr.Ignatieff credit where it’s due. He smells a rat, and he isn’t far off the mark.
The same people who want to honour the martyrs of the Golden Temple are the ones who support the terrorists responsible for the mass murder of 329 people on Air India Flight 182. This is an attack for which nobody has yet been brought to justice over, and the only terrorist convicted in relation to it had his perjury trial delayed over accusations of jury racism.
We know that the real racists are the pro-separatist Sikhs who, like the Tamil Tigers, put the cause of their civil war ahead of Canadians. Politicians would be well advised to steer well clear of this group, which recently made headlines when they threatened Ujjal Dosanjh in April.
In the annual Vaisakhi parade this year the controversial “martyr” float made a return appearance, similar to what the petition organizers want to do by commemorating Operation Blue Star, the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 in which Sikh separatist terrorists were killed.
The last thing we need is to encourage expatriate Sikhs to lobby our government into getting involved in matters of foreign sectarian violence. If we learned anything from the Sri Lankan Tamils, it’s to not get mixed up in old world politics and feuds.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com...etition-has-no-place-in-canada/#ixzz0qUoMZw4R
