At the New York 21st Vaisakhi Sikh Day parade on April 26 Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti, boldly endorsed the right of self-determination of Sikhs for a democratic South Asian buffer state of Khalistan

American Sikhs support the defiant stand of Canadian Sikhs on the issue of display of photographs of Sikh martyrs of Khalistan on parades

Diaspora Sikhs to launch a worldwide campaign to convince Canada, & other countries, to BOYCOTT the 2010 Commonwealth games being held in New Delhi where over 10, 000 Sikhs were murdered in a state-sponsored pogrom, in November 1984; and to-date nobody has been found guilty

 



Washington, D.C., Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - On a bright and sunny Saturday, on April 26, 2008, down-town New Yorkers saw the colorful 21st Vaisakhi Sikh Day Parade, marching down Broadway, in Manhatten. The parade culminated in New York’s Madison Avenue Park, where distinguished invitee, Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti, in his speech to the enthusiastic crowd, boldly endorsed the Sikh right of self-determination to seek a democratic water/food-rich buffer state of Khalistan in South Asia. (>  http://www.panthic.org/news/121/ARTICLE/4076/2008-05-02.html   <) A Sikh state destined to act as a bridge of peace and commerce between South and Central Asia. The patriotic call of Jathedar Vedanti was endorsed with repeated loud cheers of ‘Long Live Khalistan’ (Khalistan Zindabad) by the over 30, 0000 Sikhs who had gathered in New York’s Madison Avenue Park.

Sikh-American men, women and children dressed in colorful Punjabi clothes, living in the East Coast Tri State area, participated enthusiastically in the above mentioned annual New York parade. A number of beautiful floats, also joined the parade depicting Sikh religion, history, culture and memorabilia honoring Sikh martyrs who have laid down their lives fighting for freedom against the Indian occupation of the Sikh Homeland a la American martyrs like Nathan Hale, whose dying words, (minutes before he was hanged by the Colonial British on September 22, 1776) were, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” which gained him immortality. Some of the Sikh martyrs are like the thousands of Americans prisoners who were tortured to death (martyred)  in the notorious British prison ship, HMS Jersey, during the revolutionary war or like Crispus Attucks, (a mulatto with African and Native American ancestry) who is remembered, in the United States, as the first martyr of the American Revolution, who was murdered by British soldiers, in the infamous Boston Massacre, on March 5, 1770.  Other highlights of the New York parade included demonstrations of Sikh Gatka and free food stalls serving ‘langar’. 
 
The New York parade, also marked the 300th anniversary of the installation of Guru Granth Sahib, as eternal Guru by the tenth Guru Sri Gobind Singh Ji, in 1708. This New York parade was organized, as it has been organized for over two decades, by the New York Richmond Hill Sikh Cultural Society and was supported by over fifty East Coast (tri-state) Gurdwaras and Sikh Organizations like Sikhs For Justice, United Sikhs, Dal Khalsa (USA) and Sikh Youth of America.  The long list of distinguished guests included Akal Takht Jathedar Sirdar Joginder Singh Vedanti, Dr. Amarjit Singh of Khalistan Affairs Center, Washington D.C., Dr. Surjit Singh from Buffalo New York, and two Sikh-Canadian members of Canada’s Parliament, Dr. Ruby Dhalla (who represents Brampton-Springdale) and Sirdar Gurbaksh Singh Malhi who represents Bramalea-Gore-Malton constituency in Canada.

Member of Canadian Parliament Gurbaksh Singh Malhi, in his Madison Avenue Park speech, advised the meeting to involve American legislators (Law-makers) in functions like New York’s annual Sikh Day parade in future. Dr. Amarjit Singh, who spoke next, mentioned in his speech the 193 national flags flying outside the United Nations building where the Khalistan flag, he said, will soon join the flag of newly independent Kosovo. During his 25 minute oration Dr. Amarjit Singh quoted Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s following awe inspiring divine words which had an animating effect not only on the 30, 000 strong audience but also on the Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti, the chief guest, sitting on the stage behind the speaker, who spoke next:- “Kouw  kisi ko raj na deh hai; jo lay hai, nij bal say lay hai.” Rough translation: ‘No one gives anyone a sovereign state; Supreme and sovereign authority devolves only on those who have the muscle.’

Last Saturday’s successful New York parade, held in true American tradition of goodwill, freedom and happiness, reminded the participants of the huge Vaisakhi parade, held in Surrey, Canada, on April 12, 2008, (which was joined by over a hundred thousand determined Canadian Sikh men, women and children) under the shadow and strain of a widespread anti-Sikh disinformation and intimidation campaign orchestrated in the Canadian media. A campaign mounted by some ignorant and ill-informed, Canadian journalists ‘brain-washed’ probably by the bigotry of the likes of one, Ms. Kim Bolan, (a known anti-Sikh ‘constipated journalist’, an ‘Ugly Canadian’) who has constantly tried to demonize the peaceful Sikh-Canadian community by distorting the truth in order to play on post 9/11 Canadian phobias. An example of her writing is a Surrey-datelined report, dated March 28, 2008, on the website of the Times Colonist, a Victoria B.C. based newspaper, headlined, “Mounties claim veto power over Sikh parade.” In that report Kim Bolan) claims that, “The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) plans to screen floats in an annual Sikh parade to ensure terrorism and political violence aren't glorified,” as if she was a spokeswoman for the Mounties and Canada was Nazi Germany. Obviously Kim Bolan was targeting the peaceful, loyal, prosperous and upright three quarter million-strong Sikh Canadian community with the hope that the report would intimidate the Canadian Sikhs from honoring Sikh martyrs in their parades, meetings, homes and Gurdwaras. To read the ‘Ugly Canadian’s’ (Kim Bolan’s) above mentioned trashy drivel, please click at the following links: > http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=3b370a6c-af5a-4182-9c1d-2947fa481f1e   < or click at: >  http://www.pluralism.org/news/article.php?id=19414  <

As a backgrounder, please note that about a year ago, this column, dated July 11, 2007, challenged the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute for providing a stage for a hate-filled tirade, by Kim Bolan, against the over 750,000 Sikh-Canadians in which she tried to call for their disenfranchisement. The column was headlined, “Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center takes up the issue with the Vancouver-based Institute and suggests an apology - Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization sues CBC for its anti-Sikh documentary Samosa Politics.” The apology never came despite the fact that the Fraser Institute’s News Release, dated June 29, 2007, had become a party to the following insane suggestion from Kim Bolan to disenfranchise Canada’s Sikhs, which reads, “Change the nomination rules around who can vote. That little thing will reduce the extremists’ power and influence.” (>  /home/khalistancalling/2007/july11.aspx  <)    

The current vicious campaign, in the ‘naïve’ Canadian media, to demonize and intimidate the peaceful, happy and loyal Sikh-Canadian community has obviously been fathered (read financed) by Indian diplomatic offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa at al. The diplomatic and media campaign started in right earnest following a vicious and bogus letter, addressed to the Amritsar-based Shiromani Gurdwara Prabanthik Committee (SGPC), President, Avtar Singh Makkar, in March, 2008, by none other than‘ demoNcratic’ India’s weak, ‘Quizling’, Prime minister Manmohan Singh a pliable and meek individual who is perhaps ‘financially’ honest, but intellectually a totally dishonest man. (> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7281371.stm <)    Mr. Manmohan Singh, who claims he is a Sikh by wearing a Sikh turban, is no elected Prime minister who having been overwhelmingly defeated once in a general election, years ago, has avoided Indian general elections like the plague since. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his letter to the SGPC, which suddenly came to the surface, claimed that, “The (Indian) government and our agencies have credible information of efforts being made by extremist groups to revive militancy in Punjab. Remnants of Sikh rebel groups abroad are helping attempts to revive an insurgency in India’s northern state of Punjab.” Shame on Manmohan Singh! “He that is shameless is graceless,” wrote Thomas Fuller M.D. (1654-1734) the great English writer and compiler who probably wrote the line years ago with spineless, mentally dishonest people, like Indian PM Manmohan Singh, in mind.

It is worth noting that till now, analysts/experts have been talking and writing only of the dangers of cyber-terrorism to states and civil societies. For the first time China, Khalistan’s North Eastern neighbor, has experienced the lethal force of orchestrated ‘Cyber Democracy’. During the international journey of the Olympic torch, a surprised Beijing saw how small bands of internet savvy Tibetans, covertly financed (by not a very large investment) by Indian operatives agents provocateurs, showed how, in this age of the internet, the air waves and the world’s attention can be monopolized and ‘cashed’, by visuals of small colorful protests in different parts of the world.

There is a lesson in the above observation about colorful protests, for the internet savvy, free and prosperous, pro-Khalistan Sikh diaspora. A vast majority of the three million Sikhs domiciled overseas believe that (like the Jewish diaspora which helped create Israel in 1948) they too can help create a  prosperous, democratic, food/water-rich, buffer state of Khalistan, in South Asia, located between Pakistan and India which will act as a bridge of peace and commerce between South and Central Asia. Many of the three million strong diaspora Sikhs are domiciled in former British colonies, now member countries of the British Commonwealth, like Canada, U.K., Wales, Northern Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Lesotho, Malawi, Malta, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Trinidad, Pakistan, Fiji, Zambia, et al. who have been invited to take part in the October 2010 Commonwealth games in Delhi.  The Indian rulers, an evil nexus of the minority Brahmin and Bania minority communities (which make up only about 5% of India’s population), may have to regret their ‘show-off’ decision to hold the 2010 Commonwealth games in Delhi, where every street and lane witnessed the murder of over ten thousand innocent Sikh, men, women and children in a state-sponsored pogrom, in November 1984. A bloody pogrom ordered, with a ‘wink and nod’, by none other than the then Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi the late husband of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and father of the effeminate high school  dropout, 39 years old bachelor ‘Yuvraj’ Rahul Gandhi, the ‘pretender’ who is eyeing the Indian Prime Minister’s ‘throne’.

It is the general belief among the Sikhs that Canada, should show respect for it’s large Sikh-Canadian community by avoiding the October 2010 Commonwealth games being held in Delhi. An evil city, which was ‘painted’ red, in the state-sponsored November 1984 pogrom, with the blood of over ten thousand innocent Sikhs whose surviving relatives, nearly a quarter century later, still cry for justice. No one has been found guilty, nobody has been punished. Even the much trumpeted cash compensation - a paltry sum really - sanctioned by the Indian government for the delayed relief of the survivors, (mostly elderly starving widows) of the November 1984 state-sponsored and state-supervised pogrom has become a scam for greedy, thieving, corrupt Indian officials who are pocketing the measly government grant.   (>  http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080428/main2.htm    <) 

To give ‘teeth’ to the above mentioned general belief among the world’s 26 million Sikhs  an action Committee is being formed, from within the 3 million strong Sikh diaspora, which is going to coordinate the launch of a sincere, polite and peaceful world-wide protest effort to convince the Canadian government (and other Commonwealth countries too) that it DOES NOT behoove Canada, a true democracy, a champion of Human Rights, (where every citizen happily enjoys social, economic and political freedom) to participate in the October 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. An international sports meet being organized by the rulers of oligarchic caste-ridden India in blood-soaked New Delhi, a city built over Raisina village land the Colonial British unfairly expropriated, in the early 1900’s from Delhi’s historic Sikh Gurdwara Rakab Gunj.