New Delhi, India — Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi says that despite U.S. promises to help curb Sikhs; he believes Washington is withholding information on camps in the United States where the militants allegedly receive training.
In an interview published Thursday in the English language weekly Blitz, Gandhi said his government had video films of one of the camps.
He said U.S. officials had been “very categorical that they were going to help us with all the information” but added: “we feel .that there is something they could tell us which they are not telling us.
Gandhi said the United States recently had become more active in curbing the activities of Sikhs and other governments had changed their attitudes toward terrorism. But he said he found it “incredible” that Washington allowed the camps to continue to operate after pledging to help.
Sikh agitation stems from a militant campaign in India’s northern Punjab state where Sikhs are staging a peaceful campaign for autonomy. There are 14 million Sikhs in India, a nation of more than 740 million, and Punjab is the only state in which they are a majority.
Violence in Punjab during 1984 left more than 10,000 people dead, mostly Sikhs, including 6000 killed in an army attack on the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 26, 1985
