India expels Canadian diplomat
Tensions escalate after Trudeau accuses India in Sikh’s killing
New Delhi — India expelled one of Canada’s top diplomats Tuesday, ramping up a confrontation between the two countries over Canadian accusations that India may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in suburban Vancouver.
India, which has dismissed the accusations as absurd, said the expulsion came amid “growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities,” according to a statement from its Ministry of External Affairs.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to try to calm the diplomatic clash Tuesday, telling reporters that Canada is “not looking to provoke or escalate.”
“We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them and we want to work with the government of India to lay everything clear and to ensure there are proper processes,” he said. “India and the government of India needs to take this matter with the utmost seriousness.”
On Monday, Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the slaying of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a 45-year-old Sikh leader who was killed by masked gunmen in June in Surrey, outside Vancouver. For years, India has said Nijjar, a Canadian citizen born in India, has links to terrorism, an allegation Nijjar denied.
A U.S. official said Trudeau was in contact with the Biden administration about Canada’s findings before raising them publicly. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Trudeau’s willingness to speak out about the matter was taken by the White House as an indication of the Canadian leader’s certainty about what had been found.
Canada has yet to provide any evidence of Indian involvement, but if true it would mark a major shift for India, whose security and intelligence branches have long been significant players in South Asia, and are suspected in a number of killings in Pakistan. But arranging a killing in Canada, home to nearly 2 million people of Indian descent, would be unprecedented.
India, though, has accused Canada for years of giving free reign to Sikh separatists, including Nijjar.
The dueling expulsions have escalated tensions between Canada and India. Trudeau had frosty encounters with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during this month’s Group of 20 meeting in New Delhi, and a few days later Canada canceled a trade mission to India planned for the fall.
Nijjar, a plumber, was also a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan. A bloody decade-long Sikh insurgency shook north India in the 1970s and 1980s, until being crushed in a government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
The Khalistan movement has lost much of its political power but still has supporters in the Indian state of Punjab, as well as in the sizable overseas Sikh diaspora. While violence is now rare and it has been years since the active insurgency ended, the Indian government has warned repeatedly that Sikh separatists were trying to make a comeback.
Nijjar was wanted by Indian authorities, who offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of the Sikh activist, who was working with a group known as Sikhs For Justice to organize an unofficial Sikh diaspora referendum on independence from India at the time of his killing.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer and spokesperson for Sikhs For Justice, has said Nijjar was warned by Canadian intelligence officials about being targeted for assassination by “mercenaries.”
Niijar’s son, Baraj Singh Nijjar, said Tuesday that his family and the Sikh community were relieved by the Canadian actions.
On Monday, Trudeau told Parliament that Canadian security agencies were investigating “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.”
India’s foreign ministry dismissed the allegation as “absurd” and accused Canada of harboring “terrorists and extremists.”
“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it said in a statement Tuesday.
India has long demanded that Canada take action against the Sikh independence movement, which is banned in India. Canada has a Sikh population of more than 770,000, about 2% of its population.