NEW YORK, N.Y: The Sikh Cultural Society, Richmond Hill Queens has asked the United Nations to investigate the denial of basic human rights to the Sikhs in India.
In a letter to the Secretary General of the U.N., S. Jagjit Singh Mangat the President of the largest Gurdwara in the United States said, “The Sikh Cultural Society is writing to you to draw your attention to the continuing persecution of Sikhs in India.
On September 15 six Sikh students of a college in Bidar town of the Karanataka State in India were brutally massacred, about 70 were injured, and more than a thousand of their coreligionists have had to leave the area for safety.
More than two hundred Sikhs continue to be incarcerated in the Jodhpur jail without any charges being preferred against them since 1984, Hundreds of Sikhs have been arrested under draconian internal security laws without any basic legal recourse. The Amnesty International bears out these facts as also that the Sikhs are subject to third degree torture and have been killed by the police in staged ‘encounters’.
We would be glad to further substantiate our case but we feel that the United Nations will be the appropriate agency to investigate this persecution of the Sikhs.
We request your Excellency to Kindly help stop the persecution of the Sikh people in India.
Mangat said that he would urge other Sikh institutions to also write to the United Nations about the plight of the Sikhs in India.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 14, 1988
