Online secessionist rant as Centre clamps down

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service 

Chandigarh, September 6

Rattled over the clampdown by the Government of India on the online secessionist propaganda by US-based advocacy group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), the latter has warned of initiating legal action against Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in any country they visit in the future. 

Yesterday, the Centre had blocked the Twitter account of the SFJ legal adviser, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, and his Facebook pages, with an aim to block the anti-India propaganda. His accounts are not accessible to those who try using these from an Indian IP address. This followed the meeting between Rajnath Singh and Capt Amarinder Singh, where the two are learnt to have discussed the efforts made for resurgence of Khalistan and the need to nip it in the bud. 

The fresh threat by Pannun was uploaded as a live video on the Facebook page of another SFJ activist, besides the Twitter handle of SFJ. In the video, Pannun also said that the Government of India has threatened to file criminal cases against administrators of WhatsApp groups that talk of Khalistan, so he be made the admin of all these groups. He also hurled insults at the National Flag. 

Interestingly, his threat to block the entry of the two Indian politicians comes just a week after Paramjit Singh Pamma, wanted in Rashtriya Sikh Sangat chief Rulda Singh’s murder, issued a threat to the Punjab CM. In a veiled threat on his FB page, Pamma asked Capt Amarinder Singh to remember August 31, 1995, as on that day Dilawar Singh assassinated former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. 

Pamma was an active participant in the London declaration for the 2020 pro-Khalistan referendum organised by SFJ last month.  Threats are being issued not just to the Punjab CM, but even to other Sikh politicians, the  recent one being Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee chief Manjit Singh GK, asking him to support ‘Referendum 2020’.

“Threats aside, we are more concerned about blocking the entry of the moderate Sikh leadership in foreign countries by a handful of these radical leaders. For five years now, none of the top elected Sikh politicians have been able to visit North America for fear of civil suits being filed by them. These leaders do not get diplomatic immunity in either USA or Canada. Often leaders are assaulted when they do go,” said a top Intelligence officer, who also said that the Centre is “seriously considering asking the governments of countries where they stay to intervene”.

Badals’ case

• In 2012, when then CM Parkash Singh Badal had gone to the US to meet families of the Old Creek Gurdwara shooting incident, the radical groups targeted him by filing a civil lawsuit just hours before he reached
• He was accused of being ‘guilty’ of torture of Sikhs and ‘defending notorious’ police officers before the courts. It was only after it was projected that Badal had come for a diplomatic meeting with a senior US government functionary, who was present in Wisconsin at the time, that he got diplomatic immunity
• In 2013, then Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had to cancel his Canada tour for fear of civil suits being filed against him