In our last editorial we asked the Indian government to hold an open inquiry into the official manipulations and misdeeds in Punjab. Sikhs outside Punjab have also been the targets of the totalitarian regime in India which used its secret services to get its dirty fingers into Sikh affairs.
Indian diplomatic missions behaved much as their Soviet counter parts. They closely monitored the activities of the Sikhs, maintained extensive ‘black lists’ of community leaders and human right activists and interfered in community affairs. It was usual to see agents posing as newsmen taking photographs of the demonstrators in front of the missions. These photographs were then used to identify the participants in the rallies who were contacted and told to cease their activities or risk losing their Indian passports. Sikhs who were U.S. citizens were harassed by the officials who refused to grant them visas to go to India.
Thus passports and visas have been used as means to control the social and political activities of the Sikhs abroad, including US citizens. WSN has been told of a number of incidents in which Sikhs who were permanent residents, as well as US citizens were harassed and humiliated at Indian airports simply because the Indian mission here had reported their participation in demonstrations.
Soon after the Indian army assault on the Harmandir Sahib, the Rajiv regime hired a public relations firm, ostensibly to project India’s image, but in fact to help in projecting the Sikhs as terrorists.
As a part of its misinformation campaign the government gave patronage through advertisements of organizations in its control of the media that toed its line and by cutting it off if it did not, much as it did in India.
Indian diplomats, lead by Ambassador Kaul and his successor distinguished themselves with half-truths and outright lies when questioned by Congressmen about the human rights violations of the Sikhs in the Punjab. Despite overwhelming, evidence, they tried to deny that such a condition even existed.
A perusal of the book Soft Target would be an eye opener to anyone not used to the Machiavelian machinations of the Indian polity. It shows how the Indian government and its minions systematically manipulated and lied to a friendly government. Shouldn’t one expect what happened in Canada to be repeated in the U.S.? Wouldn’t a lot of recent events be better understood in light of the book?
Indian officials have been attempting to penetrate various centers of Sikh activity in the U.S. as they have been in Canada, activities in which country have been documented in the book. Officials used agent provocateurs to instigate violence at a rally in front of a mission. Press were invited and the plan succeeded in maligning the Sikhs.
That Rajiv’s regime allegedly went to the extent of blowing up a plane to further tarnish the name of the valiant community, show to which depths a power hungry group can sink.
It is incumbent on the kind of government which V.P. Singh has promised that the activities of the Indian diplomatic missions all over the world must be investigated and the guilty officials punished.
He is himself aware of the kind of dirty games these so called diplomats play. The documents of the concocted story of the accounts which his son was alleged to have in St Kitts, were stamped with the seal of the Consulate General of India in New York and signed by the Consul General with Ambassador Karan Singh was at the helm in Washington.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 29, 1989
