What has changed for Sikhs since 1984?

UK human rights activists being sent to face death penalty in COVID-stricken India as part of Tory Brexit plan raises questions over whether anything has changed for Sikhs since 1984.

Three West Midland Sikh activists are being sent to India to face a potential death penalty at the hands of a far-right nationalist regime after being used as negotiating chips in a trade deal by the UK government. On the 37th anniversary of the 1984 attack at the sacred shrine of Sikhs, Sri Harmandir Sahib, the question for Sikhs persists: What has changed since 1984?

The extradition of the “West Midlands 3” was announced during the week that UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab visited India to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal in December 2020.

The charges that the three West Midlands Sikhs are facing relate their alleged involvement in an attack on Rulda, head of the RSS who was attacked in July 2009 and later succumbed to his injuries in August. This incident took place 12 years ago, despite the trio having already been detained, interrogated and cleared of committing the same crimes 11 years ago. The British citizens face a potential death penalty after Westminster Magistrates Court extradition. Jagtar Singh Johal is also facing the same threat.

Scottish Sikh activist Jagtar Singh Johal has been detained for over three years in India, against international convention and during the country’s COVID crisis. He has been tortured under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist regime which has consistently targeted minority groups such as Sikhs, Christians, Dalits and Muslims with oppressive laws and state-supported violence.

The relationship between the UK and India has historically been detrimental to Sikhs; Britain’s East India Company began the Anglo-Sikh Wars upon invading the Sikh homeland of Punjab in 1840s. In 1919, British Armed Forces conducted a massacre upon thousands of innocent Sikh worshippers at the Jallianwalan Bagh massacre in Amritsar, and Britain later partitioned Punjab in 1947, handing one part of the state to the Muslim state of Pakistan and the other to Hindu India.

The UK also had a hand in the indefensible attack by the Indian state at the Sikhs’ holiest shrine Sri Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, Punjab, in June 1984.

The attack on Darbar Sahib claimed the lives of thousands of innocent worshippers, and the Sikhs defending Darbar Sahib attained martyrdom fighting for their faith and freedom. It was pre-planned to take place on the holy day commemorating the martyrdom of the 5th Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Arjan Dev Ji. It later came to light that the operation was codenamed Blue Star and was orchestrated the help of Israeli secret services group Mossad, as well as Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

It seems that the main crime of the Sikhs is exercising their freedom to speak. Jagtar Singh Johal ran a website called “Never Forget 1984” which highlighted the human rights abuses inflicted upon Sikhs by the Indian state throughout the nation’s history – particularly the events of June 1984.
Since the June 1984 attack, Sikhs continued to be persecuted in India. A state-supported genocide of Sikhs then took place in November that year, in which innocent Sikh families were killed in their home and on the streets. 

Homicidal mobs were directed by police, politicians and even Bollywood celebrities to murder Sikhs after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was responsible for the Blue Star attack. Thousands of Sikhs were burned alive and beaten to death, women, children and even babies were not spared. 

For decades thereafter Sikhs have been systematically murdered and their bodies disposed of by Indian police in “enforced disappearances” throughout the 1980s and 1990s. India adopted a genocidal counter-insurgency policy to crush the struggle for liberation and an independent nation of Khalistan. Since 1984 until today, Sikh activists in India and around the world are consistently hounded by national intelligence agencies and police for openly speaking about independence from India and the crimes committed by national governments to the Sikh people.

Recent convictions have been made in Germany of Indian agents found out to be spies sent by India to gather intelligence on Sikh diaspora. In the UK, the British police, instructed by Indian intelligence, conducted raids at the houses of five Sikh activists in 2018, which have yielded zero convictions. In Canada, government intelligence experts openly speak about the action they are having to take against Indian government agents spying on their Sikh citizens.

Even social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all censored Sikhs around the world who are raising awareness of Sikh human rights abuses at the behest of Modi’s regime, particularly during key times such as the first week in June. And mainstream media in India have also sought to demonise all talk of Khalistan; the Sikh independence movement, while most Western media have ignored the human rights abuses of Sikhs.

This Sunday 6th June 2021, a Remembrance March and Freedom Rally are taking place in London to remember the events of 1984. The march begins at Wellington Arch, where protesters will gather at 12pm and culminates in a rally at Trafalgar Square from 1.30pm until 3pm. The event has been commemorated in this way annually for 37 years.

In 2021, with human rights abuses continually being committed against Sikhs around the world, many in the community are questioning; what has changed since 1984? And what must we do to create change?