A week has passed since Justin Trudeau sent India-Canada ties into a whirlwind by accusing India in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Khalistani terrorist, in British Columbia’s Surrey. Meanwhile, Western media outlets have spent this time relentlessly pursuing a core objective— humanising Nijjar and whitewashing his crimes.
Western media outlets have painstakingly put up a case for Nijjar’s sainthood. The Khalistani terrorist is being painted as the true embodiment of innocence and victimhood. In Western media’s eulogy for Nijjar, he has been referenced as a Sikh leader, Sikh activist and “temple leader”. If we are to go by The New York Times or The Washington Post, Nijjar was a religious community leader. He was merely a poor and innocent plumber with a family, we are made to believe. The Financial Times took it up a notch. For FT, Nijjar was “a tireless campaigner and fatherly figure” who would lay out chairs and do other temple chores “with his own hands”.
The Western media has gone to agonising lengths to exonerate Nijjar, glossing over a ghastly track record that this supposedly virtuous, devoid-of-all-things-foul individual just happened to be tainted with.
Nijjar just happened to be on the no-fly list of the US and Canada. He just happened to be an internationally wanted criminal with an Interpol red corner notice against him. He just happened to have arrived for the first time in Canada on a fake passport with a fake identity. He just happened to have his citizenship rejected twice because of his fraudulent methods. He just happened to lead a terror group called Khalistan Tiger Force and a recruiting and training camp in Mission Hills, BC. He just happened to fly to Pakistan several times to receive training from the ISI.
He just happened to be in the bad books of India and involved in the murder of a Hindu priest in Punjab and a fellow “Sikh leader” who was not saying the right things anymore and challenged his word. He just happened to be an accused in a couple of deadly bomb blasts in Punjab. He just happened to have AK-47s, prohibited in Canada, that he fired around in the fields with his little temple buddies, totally not running a terror training camp. And while being a saintly temple leader, he just happened to be entangled with gangsters and human traffickers in Canada, not all of whom were his friends.
The question for Western media is, what made the US and Canada put him on their no-fly list? Why did they see him as a risk if he was just plumbing for a living? But this section of the media is not in the mood to ask any questions or pay the slightest heed to India’s sensibilities and its decade-long history with Khalistani extremism.
Humanising Nijjar, while glossing over the facts, is the greatest disservice to his victims. And yet, the West has attempted the very same thing at an industrial scale. Western journalists are also out to catch misty statements from Nijjar’s lawyer, Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, while grossly failing to uncover Pannu’s own involvement in Khalistani terror or even his very recent tirade against Canadian Hindus threatening them to leave the country.
Just as Trudeau named India in the killing, citing “credible allegations”, Western media set out to churn one sob story after another about a man who was killed three months ago. The assignment seems to be an endless flood of stories equating India with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia or China. That’s a hypocritical take given the US and the larger NATO’s record in neutralising perceived threats on foreign soil. Be it drone strikes to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, or another one in Baghdad to eliminate the top-most Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, the list of extrajudicial killings of terrorists at the hands of the West is long. Trudeau also happens to fully endorse such conduct.
In 2018, India handed over a list of terrorists to Justin Trudeau during his visit to the country. Nijjar was on this extradition list. But Trudeau had other plans. Raising eyebrows in New Delhi, Trudeau had Jaspal Atwal — a Khalistani convicted in Canadian courts for attempting to murder an Indian politician — invited to the events planned out. After being sensationally subbed, he left India with a promise to counter the threat and act on India’s concerns. Ultimately, on his return, he did next to nothing about the menace of Khalistanis on Canadian soil.
Five years on, the Khalistani threat has festered in the eyes of Indian authorities. Based out of Canada and involved in gangs, drugs, human trafficking, and other organised crimes, these extremists and terrorists are breeding terror operatives with lush funds targeted at destabilising the Indian state of Punjab but not limited to it. The Khalistani movement, which is entirely a diaspora issue, has escalated further with attacks on Hindu temples and on Indian diplomatic missions in Canada, the US and the UK. Open calls for the assassination of Indian diplomats did not faze Canadians. A float graphically celebrating the murder of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also did not affect Canadian authorities.
Justin Trudeau is not just inclined to turn a blind eye but to protect the Khalistanis, with reports stating that Nijjar had been tipped off by Canadian intelligence of a possible threat to his life.
Large hoardings calling for the assassination of Indian diplomats were not a problem for months until two days ago when they were finally taken down in Surrey, with Gurdwaras also directed to no longer make radical announcements on the loudspeakers. That this was allowed in the first place implicates Trudeau and his government in the proliferation of a terrorist movement aimed at the dismemberment of India. It was not until India spent a whole week raising the stakes and unleashing a volley of evidence of Canadian negligence and complicity, that cosmetic cover-ups like those in Surrey could be made.
Trudeau now says that he does not want to “provoke,” “escalate,” or “cause problems” with India but that ship has sailed, and along with it, every ounce of credibility for Western media to fall back on has been squandered too.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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