Terry Milewski
Ominous threats against two Chief Ministers. A close-up simulating one being shot in the face. A “bounty” offered for an Indian Army general facing assassination. And applause for a terrorist who slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians.
For Indian viewers, these are a few of the surprises — which should not be surprises at all — obscured by the Indian government’s ban on the U.S.-based separatist group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ). Fronted by an energetic American lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is officially labelled a terrorist in India, SFJ has been fighting through the ban and the pandemic to finally begin voting in its unofficial referendum on a breakaway Sikh state called Khalistan.
The timing of the initial vote in London — on the anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 — was not accidental, and it gives a clue to what Indians are not seeing because of the ban on Sikhs for Justice.
The group was branded an illegal organisation in January 2020, when a government order was ratified by Chief Justice D.N. Patel of the Delhi High Court. Justice Patel ruled that SFJ’s activities “threaten the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of India.” Dozens of SFJ websites were blocked in India and Pannun himself was declared an “individual terrorist.”
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