We represent before your excellency and the Government of the United States of America on behalf of my party and on behalf of the Sikh Nation the case of two Sikh youth leaders—S. Ranjit Singh Gill and S. Sukhminder Singh Sandhu detained by the U.S. Police and languishing in the New York prison for more than five years.
The people and the Government of the United States of America have been champions of the rights of the peoples and in the contemporary developments have played a significant role in highlighting and supporting directly and indirectly the cause of people fighting for sovereignty.
India however continues to be a bastion of fascism and religious fundamentalism, Revolutionary and epoch-making developments in Soviet Russia and Europe have had no effect on the thinking, political governance and statesmanship of the people at the helm of affairs in this country.
Today, the Sikh nation is engaged in a bitter and prolonged struggle for sheer survival fighting the declared genocidal policies of the rulers of this country in the heartlands of the Punjab and other states of India.
Since the partition of this country the Sikh people are facing the mighty onslaught of the brute Indian state, Punjab it’s in a state of siege. The Punjab has been illegally occupied by India and its being governed as a colony of India. The people of Punjab have had no say in the determination of their political status and economic progress. As a people they have no economic rights imperative for the progress of a people; they have no religious rights—basic rights recognized by the world fraternity as necessary for the development of humankind: the Sikhs have no civil, political and human rights—recognized by the U.N. Charter and various U.N. conventions and covenants as basic rights of all peoples and no democratic and fundamental rights—which comprise the foundation of liberty, equality and fraternity of Man.
Colonization of the Punjab has forced the Sikhs to seek the right to self-determination and regain their sovereignty. Since the beginning of this century the Sikhs are braving Brahmin chicanery and the might of the Indian armed forces and police forces. In the early seventies the Sikh youth who could no more bear the deceit, bigotry and slave like attitude of the brown sahibs, declared unequivocally their determination to start a movement to establish the sovereignty of the Khalsa.
- Ranjit Singh Gill and S. Sukhminder Singh Sandhu are two youth leaders of the All India dents organization devoted to the creation of an environment in which the aspirations of the Sikh nation can find their fullest expression. These two youth leaders were organizing the Sikh youth to participate in the present Sikh struggle.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation detained Ranjit Singh and Sukhminder Singh in New Jersey on May 14, 1987, This was done following malicious propaganda and disinformation campaign of the government of India. It is unprecedented in the annals of the U.S, judicial system that merely on suspicion and diplomatic pressure, two young men are incarcerated without bail and without trial, for the last four years and six months.
Your Excellency government is aware of the details of the case. The Shiromani Akali Dal appreciates the role of the Amnesty International, USA branch which filed an amicus curiae petition for the two youth leaders. It further appreciates the role of public-spirited civil rights lawyers of the U.S. and Human Rights organizations in the Punjab who have furnished detailed information to the U.S, state department and In U.S, courts.
The Shiromani Akali Dal wishes to point out pertinent facts of the case:
- a) That four years and six months is a long period to arrive at a judicial decision.
- b) That four years and six months too long a period to deny bail.
- e) That this long detention signifies that the U.S. government is treating the two Sikh youth leaders as political prisoners.
- d) That there is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and India.
- e) That it has been held in various human rights cases by the European Human Rights Court at Strasbourg that the extraditing country is legally and morally bound not to deport political detente’s back to a country where death penalty has not been abolished or where
The prisoner is likely to face unequal and unfair trial.
- f) That India still practices capital punishment and the justice-loving people of the world have seen that individuals like Kehar Singh and Maqbool Butt have been sentenced to die on insufficient and scant evidence.
- g) That, moreover, since the last decade, the Sikhs in particular, and minorities, aboriginal advises and trade unionists in general are facing unequal trial under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) which negates all universally-accepted principles of criminal jurisprudence.
h)That the Indian agencies who have perfected the art of incriminating Sikhs to all kinds of fabricated cases, aceused Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu to have conspired to kill Gen .A.S.Vaidya in Pune, However the Designated Special Court, clearly said in its concluding judgment that there was no conspiracy whatsoever,
- i) That even the Supreme Court of India absolved the two of any connection with the assassination of Gen. Vaidya.
j)That the armed forces, paramilitary forces and the police who are administering the state of the Punjab as an occupation army have surpassed worst dictatorial records in killing Sikh youth extra-judicially. Sikh prisoners while being transferred from one prison to another or while being taken out from judicial custody, or from police stations where they are kept in illegal detention, on police remand are shot dead in stage-managed encounters, To cite an example, Manbir Singh Chaheru was killed in a fake encounter by the Senior Superintendent of Police J.P.Virdi, now on a diplomatic assignment to Nigeria. Very recently there are press reports of how the family members of one militant leader, Balwinder Singh Jatana, were killed and their bodies set on fire by the police of Chandigarh under instructions from the Senior Superintendent of Police, Sumedh Saini, I.PS. In Pilibhit, U.P., ten Sikh young men were removed from a bus and shot in cold blood by the Police.
The people of the United States of America are freedom-loving people. The government of the U.S. is playing a key role in imitating efforts to establish a peaceful world order. Your imitative at disarmament will go a long way in reducing mutually destructive weapons and increasing purposeful developmental expenditure. It is the earnest hope of all right-thinking people that the U.S. should be more stringent about sanctioning aid to countries that have a bad human Rights record.
Your Excellency’s U.S. government is giving serious attention to launch a Global Police Force in Iraq to monitor developments In that country, The Indian state is also perpetuating atrocities on the Sikhs like the Iraqis on the Kurds, in violation of all international norms. We, the people of the Punjab seek such-like intervention so that our life and liberty and honor of our womenfolk is safe.
In a very systematic manner the Punjab stands constitutionally partitioned from India. Various articles of the Indian constitution do not apply to the Punjab. Since the last five years, the people of the Punjab have been denied the right to self-governance and Presidential rule imposed in violation of Section 356 of the Indian Constitution. A different set of rules and regulations apply for the economic and industrial development of the Punjab. A set of black laws apply only to the Punjab. With the release of political prisoners—Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu, we also seek your Excellency’s intervention in formalizing this partition and decolonizing the Punjab, just as you have enabled the people of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to regain their sovereignty.
The struggle of Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu is symbolic of the democratic fight and defiance of the might of the formidable Indian state and its forces without weapons.
Speedy trial and speedier justice is the basic requirement to respect the dignity and life of an individual like Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu, hundreds of Sikh youth are detained without trial for six to eight years in prisons at Lucknow, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Ambala, Sangrur, Amritsar and Nabha in India, in prisons at Lahore in Pakistan, in the U.K, Canada and Romania. While inthis memorandum we seek the unconditional and honorable release of Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu, we urge your Excellency to impose conditions pertaining the release of political prisoners before sanctioning any aid to India and also to exert diplomatic pressure to set these youth free. We call upon your Excellency to intervene and release Ranjit Singh Gill and Sukhminder Singh Sandhu as free world citizens. The Sikh nation would be full of gratitude if you grant them political asylum and further give them the choice of choosing their citizenship or to live as stateless persons till the Sikhs Tegain their sovereignty back home in the Punjab or else they would be eliminated,
Simranjit Singh Mann
President
Shiromanl Akall Dall
Article extracted from this publication >> December 13, 1991
