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The Indian authorities instructed its consulates in North America to launch a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” towards Sikh diaspora organizations in Western international locations, in response to a secret memorandum issued in April 2023 by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The memo, which was obtained by The Intercept, lists a number of Sikh dissidents underneath investigation by India’s intelligence businesses, together with the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo says. Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a goal within the doc, a killing the Canadian authorities stated was ordered by Indian intelligence.
The memo addresses India’s rising issues about its popularity as a result of activism from Sikh dissident organizations and portrays its political enemies as extremist and even terrorist organizations. Titled “Action Points on Khalistan Extremism,” utilizing the identify Sikh activists use for a separatist state, the doc lists a number of Sikh activist organizations it blames for participating in “anti-India propaganda,” in addition to acts of “arson and vandalization” focusing on Indian pursuits in North America.
The doc instructs officers at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence businesses to confront the teams Sikhs for Justice, Babbar Khalsa International, Sikh Youth of America, Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, World Sikh Parliament, and Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar America. It means that Nijjar and a number of other different “suspects” are affiliated with certainly one of these teams, Babbar Khalsa International. Babbar Khalsa International is proscribed as a terrorist group within the U.S. and Canada, however the different organizations named within the doc are thought-about authorized in each international locations.
A frontrunner of certainly one of one other of the listed teams, Sikhs for Justice, was the goal of an Indian assassination plot, in response to federal prosecutors within the U.S. The indictment, unsealed last week, accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian nationwide, of working with Indian officers to kill Sikhs for Justice normal counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen based mostly in New York.
The leaked April memo from India’s Ministry of External Affairs doesn’t explicitly order the killings of Sikh activists. Instead, it calls on Indian consular officers working within the U.S. and Canada to work in cooperation with India’s Research and Analysis Wing, a overseas intelligence company; the National Investigation Agency, a counterterror police pressure; and the Intelligence Bureau, an inner safety company akin to the FBI. Aside from Nijjar, various individuals accused within the doc of getting ties with BKI are believed to be based mostly in Pakistan or presently incarcerated in India.
The Indian authorities didn’t reply to a request for remark. While the U.S. and Canada have each now charged India with orchestrating assassinations towards Sikhs within the West, the key doc obtained by The Intercept is the primary public proof displaying that the Indian authorities was focusing on these particular Sikh diaspora organizations and dissidents.
Those concerned in Sikh diaspora advocacy stated that the Indian authorities incessantly characterizes any political exercise by Sikh separatist organizations as militant or extremist in nature.
“The Indian government and media consistently aim to manufacture a narrative that describes any type of political advocacy for Khalistan or Sikh sovereignty as ‘Sikh extremism’ as a pretext to justify a repressive security-based response,” stated Prabjot Singh, an activist and editor of the Panth-Punjab Project, a digital platform specializing in Sikh politics and sociopolitical points. “It’s important to recognize that this is a strategy that India employs in Punjab to justify crackdowns on Sikh political organizing, while misusing diplomatic resources abroad to try and enlist other countries as partners in this effort.”
Reputational Harm
India’s crackdown on Sikh activists is available in response to an ongoing marketing campaign advocating for the creation of an unbiased Sikh state within the Indian province of Punjab. During the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, a battle over separatism in Punjab claimed the lives of 1000’s of Sikhs and others earlier than the insurgents have been crushed by the Indian army. The counterinsurgency concerned widespread human rights abuses by Indian safety forces, in addition to acts of terrorism by separatist militants, together with, most notoriously, the lethal bombing of an Air India flight in 1985.
While Sikh separatism has largely been suppressed inside India, the trigger has continued within the diaspora as a political motion that organizes protests and lobbies towards the Indian authorities with the goal of holding referendums in Punjab. The Indian authorities has complained in regards to the actions of diaspora Sikh activists to the Canadian and U.S. governments, typically accusing these teams of terrorism.
The secret Ministry of External Affairs memorandum focuses its justifications for the crackdown towards Sikh dissident teams on perceived reputational hurt from their actions, in addition to issues in regards to the affect of Sikh organizations in Western politics. Under a piece labeled “Khalistan Extremism,” the doc blames Sikh diaspora organizations for “defaming Indian government of so-called torturing, murdering and disappearing thousands of Sikhs” and “attempting to degrade India’s international image.”
Sikh activists have held main protests at Indian diplomatic missions in Western international locations lately, a few of which have concerned provocative denunciations of Indian authorities officers and vandalism of diplomatic buildings. India has criticized the alleged failure by Western governments to defend its consular employees from perceived threats and harassment throughout such demonstrations. The doc notes with concern the influence of those protests, whereas suggesting that the Khalistan activist motion is being assisted by public officers in Western international locations.
“The pro-Khalistan organizations have become obviously more extreme,” the doc says. “Their strategy has gradually shifted from narrative building to street protests, and inputs from our missions indicate that top officials of pertinent countries have provided a guiding hand in pro-Khalistan campaign which has posed a grave challenge to our global interests.”
Ties between India and Western international locations have warmed lately, owing to a shared curiosity in containing China. Yet suspicions and tensions within the relationships stay, because the memo signifies. The doc expresses the assumption that Western politicians could also be refusing to crack down on Sikh activists to exert stress on India on different topics, together with its impartial stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Notably, we have raised our concerns about those elements to the U.S. and Canada constantly. But they keep using human rights and freedom of speech as pretexts, asserting that these organizations have not committed any crime within their territories,” the memo says. “Although the relation between India and the West continues to gain momentum, the Khalistan issue has become a subtle leverage. While depicting India as a strategic partner to contain China and Russia, the West keeps utilizing Khalistan as a geopolitical tool to squeeze India amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”
The categorised memo is signed by Vinay Kwatra, India’s overseas secretary, and listed for distribution to a number of Indian consulates in North America. Kwatra’s signature was analyzed by a forensic handwriting knowledgeable and located with excessive confidence to match information of his signature in different, publicly out there paperwork reviewed by The Intercept.
U.S. and Canadian officers have issued statements indicating that shared intelligence, together with intercepted communications of Indian authorities officers, allowed them to find out that India was concerned in Nijjar’s homicide. Unsealed court docket paperwork within the murder-for-hire plot focusing on Pannun likewise point out vital U.S. authorities interception of digital communications between Indian officers and other people engaged on their behalf within the U.S.
Global Assassination Program
The Indian authorities’s focusing on of Sikh diaspora activists made world headlines with the brazen killing of Nijjar, who was shot to demise in a hail of bullets outdoors a Sikh temple close to Vancouver in June. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian authorities of involvement within the gangland-style homicide, resulting in an ongoing diplomatic disaster.
In the months since Trudeau’s accusation, extra particulars on what seems to be a broad-based Indian focused killing marketing campaign have change into public, together with the U.S. Justice Department indictment alleging that Indian intelligence brokers additionally tried to assassinate Pannun, the New York-based American citizen and counsel for Sikhs for Justice. The assassination plot focusing on Pannun was thwarted, a prosecutor within the Southern District of New York stated, when an individual working on the behest of the Indian authorities hired an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent to hold out the killing.
The indictment towards Gupta, the 52-year-old suspect, who has a background in organized crime, contains statements alleging that extra individuals within the U.S. have been supposed targets. According to paperwork from the case, Gupta, who’s described in court docket paperwork as working in shut cooperation with intelligence handlers in India, informed the undercover DEA operative that India had “so many targets,” together with people in New York and California, promising “more jobs, more jobs” to the hitman after Pannun was killed.
Sikh diaspora activists have alleged Indian authorities involvement within the mysterious deaths of different dissidents, together with, most lately, a 35-year-old British citizen named Avtar Singh Khanda, who died this year in what his household claims to be a case of poisoning. Khanda had reportedly been harassed and threatened by Indian intelligence within the lead as much as his demise in a British hospital simply days earlier than Nijjar’s homicide. The Intercept reported this September that the FBI had additionally visited Sikh-American activists after the Nijjar’s homicide to warn them of intelligence displaying that they have been liable to assassination.
An assassination marketing campaign towards diaspora Sikh dissidents additionally seems to be underway in international locations outdoors the West. A Sikh activist in Pakistan named Lakhbir Singh Rode, together with one other unnamed dissident, have been reportedly targets, in response to categorised Pakistani intelligence paperwork previously reported by The Intercept. The Pakistani paperwork stated Rode and the opposite activist have been being surveilled and deemed to be at imminent danger of assassination by India’s Research and Analysis Wing. (Rode reportedly died in early December, with press accounts attributing his passing to sickness.) At least two different Sikh dissidents in Pakistan have been killed lately. According to Pakistani intelligence assessments, “anti-state activists and local criminal networks” working underneath the route of RAW have been behind the plots and deliberate to commit extra killings of each Sikh and Kashmiri separatists based mostly in Pakistan.
While India has a hostile relationship with Pakistan spanning a long time, the revelation that Indian officers have been finishing up offensive intelligence operations in pleasant Western international locations has change into a supply of embarrassment for the Indian authorities. India responded to accusations by Canada that it assassinated Nijjar by halting visa service for Canadians and accusing Canada of appearing as a protected harbor for terrorists. In public pronouncements towards the U.S. because the revelation of its alleged involvement within the focusing on of Pannun, India has been extra conciliatory, promising to conduct an internal inquiry to find the info behind the case.
Tensions With the West
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs doc obtained by The Intercept expresses appreciable alarm in regards to the rising affect of Sikh diaspora actions within the West. Several distinguished Sikh politicians in Western international locations have a tense or hostile relationship with India, together with Jagmeet Singh, a Canadian parliamentarian and main opposition get together chief who was barred from entry to India in 2014 over public feedback about its human rights report.
“There are about 1 million Sikhs in North America alone,” the Indian memo says. “The growing anti-India activities and propaganda by pro-Khalistan elements are of great concern for India.” The doc goes on to say that members of diaspora Sikh organizations have “penetrated the mainstream politics in the U.S. and Canada,” and are working to “manipulate the countries’ policy towards India.”
In addition to calling for a focused crackdown on Sikh diaspora organizations, the memo advises Indian authorities based mostly within the West to construct nearer relationships with native legislation enforcement businesses and “think tanks,” whereas monitoring Sikh activists personal contacts with authorities officers. The memo additionally requires the recruitment of the Indian diaspora on this marketing campaign. “Indian diaspora needs to be mobilized,” it reads, suggesting outreach to various low-profile teams.
“These organizations could be cultivated as vital force in the street confrontation with Sikh extremists,” it says. “Special efforts should be paid to establish cooperation with moderate Sikhs, so as to integrate the neutral Sikh community.”
The fallout from Nijjar’s killing and the tried homicide of Pannun continues to influence Indian ties with Western international locations. According to Indian press stories, the U.S., Canadian, and British governments reportedly expelled senior RAW officers working at Indian consular workplaces in response to Nijjar’s assassination, with the U.S. blocking India from changing its station chief in Washington. The strikes have left RAW with no official footprint in North America for the primary time since its founding in 1968.
“The chilling effect on speech that Sikhs are experiencing today is real. Some people who would otherwise speak out against [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi are nervous, some who would otherwise organize and protest over the recent foiled assassination plot are staying home for fear that they themselves could be surveilled, harassed, or experience violence of some kind,” stated Arjun Sethi, a human rights lawyer and legislation professor at Georgetown University. “Many Sikhs left India seeking to seek refuge in North America, and it is unacceptable that some of those same people now fear that the India government could target them on Canadian or American soil.”
“Sikhs who speak out for Khalistan, which today is a political movement, who speak out to criticize India, or who speak out generally, could be caught up in the crossfire.”
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