Singh condemns terrorism amid controversy over Sikh seperatist rally
OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh issued a blanket condemnation of terrorist acts Wednesday following media reports about his attendance at a California rally three years ago that sang the praises of Sikh separatism and a violent religious leader killed during the 1984 invasion of India’s Golden Temple.
Singh issued a statement in which he condemned all acts of terrorism, regardless of who is responsible, after the Globe and Mail disclosed that he attended and spoke at the 2015 rally in San Francisco, an event billed as a commemoration of Sikhs who died during the bloody 1984 invasion in Amritsar.
Billing himself an advocate for human rights, Singh said while he believes in allowing the Sikh community the opportunity to process the feelings inflicted by the trauma of the 1984 invasion, which he calls a genocide, he does not condone violence as a response.
Many Indian-Canadian families immigrated to Canada in the years following the temple attack, fleeing the tension and antiSikh rioting that followed it. Singh said he has dedicated much of his work to helping the community answer how it can “move through pain and trauma in order to reach acceptance so that it can arrive peacefully” at reconciliation.
“I encourage all those facing these tough questions not to fall prey to rage and violence, but rather to embrace your truth and move forward with love and courage,” he wrote.
The statement comes at a time of strained Canada-India relations, in part because of lingering Indian concerns that Canadian governments tolerate Sikh separatism and extremism by not speaking out against it.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to India became more of a diplomatic embarrassment than a peace-building exercise, although Trudeau did manage to make some headway, publicly condemning extremism and signing a joint security framework with India to counter terrorism and violent extremism. The demand that all Sikhs constantly condemn violence in general is not only tiring, it’s offensive, said Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization in Canada.
“It’s a little bit awkward for us because there is no violence for us to condemn,” he said. The only violence people can point to happened decades ago, and it is unfair to continually accuse Sikhs of condoning violence because of the actions of others more than 30 years ago, he continued.
“There are voices in India who call anyone who criticizes the Indian government as a radical or an extremist,” he said. “But in 20-plus years there is no actual examples of violence.”
Balpreet Singh called Trudeau’s recent trip “a massive disaster for the Sikh community” that set the community back decades in Canada.
He said there are many Canadian Sikhs who felt let down by Trudeau on the trip for not defending them against Indian allegations that violence and extremism was coming into India from Canada’s Sikh community.
At one particular news conference during the trip, Trudeau did not answer when asked if he felt there was a Sikh separatist problem in Canada, saying only that Canada would address those issues “wherever they arise.”
A spokeswoman for Trudeau said Wednesday the government believes freedom of speech and expression are “at the core of democracy.”
“These rights are universal,” Eleanore Catenaro said in email. “The prime minister would never equate the Sikh community or any one community with extremism. However, our government’s position is clear – we condemn all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
The Liberals won a number of seats in the last election largely with the support of the Sikh community. There are more than half a dozen seats around Toronto and Vancouver where the Indian community accounts for more than one-third of the population; in two of them, it makes up more than half.
The Liberals won them all, and many felt the trip to India was designed - at least in part – as a form of political outreach.
Trudeau spent much of the trip expressing Canada’s official support for a united India and condemning violence in order to quiet allegations within India that Canada supported Sikh separatism and that his cabinet included Sikh separatists.
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also expressed concern in the past about Trudeau attending Sikh parades and celebrations.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asleep in his Nairobi hotel room early Saturday morning fighting a stomach bug when White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called to wake him around 2 a.m. to relay a terse message from President Donald Trump: The boss was not happy.
The president was so eager to fire Tillerson that he wanted to do so in a tweet on Friday, but Kelly persuaded Trump to wait until his secretary of state was back in the United States from Africa, two people familiar with the conversation said. It was Tillerson’s first trip there since Trump disparaged parts of the continent as “shithole countries.”
But Kelly had also warned Tillerson to possibly expect a pejorative tweet from Trump over the weekend, a State Department official said. Tillerson failed to fully understand that the chief of staff was gently signaling to him that he was about to be fired.
And so, just over four hours after Tillerson’s government plane touched down at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday morning, the secretary of state learned of his dismissal from a tweet Trump issued just minutes after The Washington Post first reported the news.
“Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service!” Trump tweeted, in a message that began with congratulations for CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick to become secretary of state. The president also nominated Gina Haspel to lead the CIA, making her the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed. Both she and Pompeo are subject to Senate confirmation.
More than three hours after his tweet, Trump finally called Tillerson from Air Force One. For Tillerson, it was a humiliating end to 14-month relationship defined by mutual animosity and frustration. In his departure statement Tuesday afternoon, Tillerson thanked career diplomats for their “honesty and integrity” and the American people for “acts of kindness” – but pointedly did not thank Trump or praise his leadership.
Tillerson’s firing was long-anticipated, yet the way it played out stunned official Washington and was classic Trump. The man who made his name by declaring “You’re fired!” on reality television is loath to actually fire people in person, outsourcing Tillerson’s dismissal to Twitter.
Officials at the White House and the State Department, who have been at loggerheads since the beginning of the administration, offered conflicting accounts of just how the departure occurred. And the chaotic aftermath led to collateral damage – this time in the form of Steve