Remarks by David Kilgour, MP. Edmonton Southeast:
The Sikh struggle for restoration of their fundamental human rights, liberties and freedoms has been going on for many decades. The Indian Armored military assault on Sikhs’ holiest shrines in 1984, removed the thin veneer of political maneuvering and revealed India’s real intent of destroying the Sikhs’ self-esteem, heritage and spiritual values.
Although India continues to mount military, administrative, political and economic pressures against the Sikhs, the winds of change sweeping the world, augur well for the Sikhs engaged in a struggle for freedom and sovereignty. We believe, if the Soviet totalitarian regimes could not keep the masses under political and economic subjugation, for too long, the Sikhs have every reason to hope and believe that India’s strangulation of its minorities cannot last forever. In fact, we believe that freedom for India’s religious and cultural minorities is only a small step away.
It is an honor to join you once again this year to share fellowship and talk about the issues of concern to Canadians of Sikh faith. Our host, the World Sikh Org., has reflected the legitimate religious and political aspirations of Sikhs worldwide for almost eight years now.
Today, the world recognizes Sikhs as a distinct and separate people who have managed to maintain their ideals and their separate history throughout history. I know it hasn’t always been easy. Despite attempts to destroy your identity by force of arms, by assimilation and by acculturation, you have successfully fought to maintain your own way of life and follow a clear-cut set of ideas.
The Sikh community in Canada has faced many obstacles and it has prospered in spite of them. You have suffered from racist laws, high head taxes, limited employment and unfriendly neighbors. Yet Sikhs have emerged from the crucible of history with determination intact and an admirable resilience in the face of such overt prejudice as the not too-distant Campaign against turbans in the RCMP.
Sikh Aspirations: The theme of the meeting is “Sikh Sovereignty: When and how.” The authors of the recently published book, “The Sikhs’ Struggle for Sovereignty: An Historical Perspective,” clearly document the formidable obstacles the Sikhs had to overcome in order to keep their identity and religion alive. Their road to achieve sovereignty has been marked with blood. betrayals and false promises, including the India Congress party’s betrayal of the cause of the Sikhs’ state even though Jawahar Lal Nehru himself in 1946 said publicly that he would have no “objection to have a separate static in the north of India from where the Sikhs should get warmth of freedom.” The whole question of sovereignty is an important topic at any time, but events around the world have illustrated how crucial it is to resolve these questions peacefully.
As we watched the former Soviet Union carve itself into independent states, and more recently the split of former Czechoslovakia, what are we to learn? Certainly the events in Eastern Europe do not teach us what nothing is permanent nor beyond change in new world reality. But they also teach us how important it is to respect and protect basic human rights. Nowhere was this point made clearer than in Bosnia Herze govenia. As the peoples of the former Yugo Slavia strive to claim their independence and might to self-determinant, the casualness have been peace and basic human rights.
When innocent blood is shed, and innocent civilians become pawns in truly vicious battles, the vision of a sovereign nation state often gets lost in the daily struggle of war. Violence is no means to achieve justice, peace and freedom.
Sikhs have recognized this for centuries. The constitution of the World Sikh Organization says the most important objective is to promote and follow the teachings of the 10 Gurus and Si Gum Granth Sahib Jee, which means the most honored teacher, the Sacred Book. The position of the World Sikh Organization is for peaceful and lawful means to achieve its objectives. The statement of the organization’s secretary general spelled it out clearly. I quote, “Terrorism and bloodshed only leads to more bloodshed. Sikhs historically are a people committed to peace. This cycle of violence can only cease with the peaceful resolution of Sikh’s legitimate religious and political aspirations by the government of India.”
I know that one of the five objectives of the World Sikh Organization Constitution is, and | quote again, “To strive through peaceful means for the establishment of a Sikh nation, Khalistan.”
The essential point for Sikh Canadians, of course, is that our Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives every Canadian the right to advocate peacefully whatever she or he believes. Once cannot shout fire in a crowded theater, but if a group or individual in this country wants to call for an independent Scotland, Bosnia or Khalistan, that’s a privilege of our free and open society. Provided people promote their cause nonviolently, the elected government of Canada presumably either agrees or disagrees with a particular cause.
But there are things that every government should agree on, like basic human rights. Under the U.N. Human Rights Convention, they are an inherent right of all peoples. Governments do not grant us our rights. The people who elect governments grant them the power to protect these rights.
As I watch the developments in Bosnia and across the former Yugoslavia, I am saddened and appalled that these most basic human rights have been the first and most regrettable casualty of war. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, more than one million Bosnia Muslims have been forced from their lands into Croatia and other neighboring countries. There are more than 1.5 million displaced persons today living in camps throughout Croatia.
Last year, when the war was threatening to spill out of Croatia into Bosnia-Herzegovina, world leaders called in virtual unison for the multiethnic republic to remain a single state. Now, just recently, former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and David Owen, from Britain, forged an agreement which, if accepted would carve that same republic into 10 self-governing provinces.
And what has been the cost?
Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been killed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hundreds of thousands have been injured. It was recently estimated that the aggression has caused more than $19 billion (U.S.) damage in Croatia alone.
What lessons are we to learn from this costly struggle? That democracy and self-determination have a price? I know this is not the cost. It does not have to carry the pride of human life,
In Canada, we learned that the present Canadian government did not have the courage to support a United Nations blockade in the former Yugoslavia until we received firsthand reports of the atrocities against the Croatian and Bosnian peoples and that the worst fears, including the systematic rape of thousands of women, had been realized. I know that many in the World Sikh Organization have been dissatisfied with the Malroney government’s handling of your concerns. Gian Singh Sandhu, in a widely circulated letter to Barbara McDougall, Secretary of State for External Affairs, last March suggested the following. I quote; “Might I suggest that the government of Canada would do well to get some input on India from sources other than the government of India. Nongovernment organizations like Amnesty International and Asia Watch should certainly be consulted and considered for a Start” Jasbeer Singh, a prominent member of the Edmonton Sikh community and my good friend, captured the challenge that Sikh communities face in Canada and elsewhere. He said, “We the Sikhs in the Western democratic nations have an historical role and responsibility. Our gurus taught us to stand for and if need be, fight for the rights and interests of anyone oppressed and persecuted.” Friends, as you examine the possibilities of sovereignty, I don’t think you could have any better guidance than that.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 29, 1993
