TORONTO
\nTwice since July 2022, Moninder Singh, spokesperson for a Sikh advocacy group in Canada\u2019s British Columbia province, has had police come to his door in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey.
\nTwice, Singh said, they warned him that he faced an imminent risk of assassination, though they did not say from whom.
\nThese warnings prompted the 43-year-old Canadian to stay away from his home for months at a time _ away from his wife and children, ages 15 and 11.
\n\u201cIndia has gotten away with so much over the years and under Modi\u2019s regime, its impunity,\u201d Singh said, referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. \u201cThey feel like they\u2019re just so powerful that no one\u2019s really going to hold them in check. And they probably have been correct over the past decade or so.\u201d
\nMoninder Singh\u2019s experience illustrates the threats that some members of Canada\u2019s Sikh community _ the largest outside India\u2019s Sikh-majority East Punjab _ are facing at a time of mounting tensions between the governments of India and Canada.
\nThe Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country\u2019s national police service, said this week it has communicated more than a dozen threats to people like Singh who are advocating for the creation of a Sikh homeland carved out of India. Canada\u2019s Sikhs have been in the spotlight since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year accused India of involvement in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader in Canada and Moninder Singh\u2019s friend, who was shot in Surrey on June 18 last year.
\nThe Indian government has denied involvement in the killing of Nijjar and accused Canada of providing a safe haven for Sikh separatists.
\nON Monday, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, linking them to Nijjar\u2019s murder and alleging a broader effort to target Indian dissidents in Canada through killings, extortion, use of organised crime and clandestine information-gathering.
\nIndia retaliated by ordering the expulsion of six Canadian diplomats and called the allegations preposterous and politically motivated. Trudeau said on Monday Canada has found \u201cclear and compelling evidence that agents of India\u2019s government have engaged in and continue to engage in activities that pose a significant threat to public safety\u201d.
\nCanadian police spokesperson Camille Boily-Lavoie said law enforcement agencies have a duty to warn people \u201cwho are subjects of a clear, serious and imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm\u201d.
\nThe warnings left Moninder Singh shaken.
\n\u201cThey don\u2019t tell you who, where _ any of those types of things,\u201d said Singh, who serves as spokesperson for the activist group B.C. Gurdwaras Council. \u201cThey don\u2019t tell you what to do, really. They just kind of give you an idea that, `Hey, we\u2019ve told you now, now you should be warned and you should take precautions.\u2019\u201d
\nBalpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organisation of Canada advocacy group, said the Sikh community has \u201cseen a rise in violence over the past few months in terms of the targeting of Sikh activists, in terms of extortions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TORONTO Twice since July 2022, Moninder Singh, spokesperson for a Sikh advocacy group in Canada\u2019s British Columbia province, has had police come to his door in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey. Twice, Singh said, they warned him that he faced an imminent risk of assassination, though they did not say from whom. These warnings prompted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-438347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n