- CHAPPIE. Mr. Speaker, on June 6, the second anniversary to the siege on the Sikhs holiest shrine, thousands gathered in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C, to mourn the more than 1,000 Sikhs who died at the hands of the Indian Army, and to plead once again for an end to the violence
The Golden Temple incident has become a symbol of the strife and suffering that divides India, Unfortunately, the siege was not an isolated event, Indian security forces again desecrated the Golden Temple on April 30, 1986, and we have just learned that Gurdaspur and Amritsar, where the Golden Temple is located, have been put under Indian security force rule,
Such actions fan the flames of resentment and anger that have burned in Punjab since 1947 when India was partitioned into Moslem, Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, Many Sikhs felt cheated because they didn’t get their own homeland, Since then, they have pressed unsuccessfully for a measure of religious and political autonomy in Punjab, where they make up a majority of the population.
The Sikhs struggle isn’t that well known in the United States. The Indian government prohibits foreign journalists from covering Punjab, so the only news available to us comes from the Indian government or from firsthand accounts that leak out despite the news censorship. While we hear a Jot about the Sikh extremists who have taken up arms to make their point, there is another side to the story.
The Sikhs who live in my district and who monitor events in Punjab tell of government brutality and religious persecution against their countrymen, Their claims have been substantiated by noted Indian jurists and human rights advocates in a publication called “Report to the National: Oppression in Punjab,” which is banned in India.
The Sikhs also charge that the Indian government has infiltrated their organizations to discredit them. After a 4month investigation, the Toronto Globe and Mail, which had conducted a 4month investigation into the charges, reported that it had found evidence of an Indian government intelligence operation, “designed to divide Canada’s Sikh community and neutralize the efforts of a separatist lobby that promotes a Sikh homeland in the Punjab”.
These reports are disturbing to me and the 6,000 Sikh who live in my congressional district in northern California, Today; I join with Sikhs around the world in urging stop to the bloodshed. The June 6 anniversary of the Golden Temple siege is a haunting reminder of the factionalism and suffering in India, before yet another year goes by; I implore Mr. Ghandi to make peace by negotiating a permanent and real freedom for the Sikh nation.
Extract from Congressional Record — June 20, 1986.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 22, 1986
