Organizers of a community referendum on Punjabi independence say they’ve received a “slap in the face” from a B.C. school district that cancelled their rental of a school to host a vote on the topic this weekend.
The group Sikhs For Justice, which describes itself as a human rights advocacy group, had secured the Tamanawis Secondary School in Surrey to hold a referendum on Khalistan on Sunday.
The Khalistan movements support the creation of a separate state for Sikhs. The movements rose to prominence in the 1980s, but discussion around sovereignty for Sikhs and Punjab can be traced back to the 1947 partition of India.
The Surrey School District, however, cancelled the group’s rental on Sept. 3 due to a “violation” of the rental agreement. By email, it said promotional posters for the event featured Tamanawis Secondary School alongside images of a weapon.
The posters show a pen being used to stab a gun.
“Despite repeated attempts to address the issue, the event organizers failed to remove these concerning images, and materials continued to be posted throughout Surrey and on social media,” the district wrote.
“Our decision is in no way an endorsement of, or criticism of, any political position.”
The district said its rental policies and guidelines support its overall goal of creating a “safe environment” in schools. It will provide a refund to the event organizations, it added.
Sikhs For Justice volunteer Inderjeet Singh said the group was not notified of the cancellation until Sunday, a week ahead of the event. The vote will now be held at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, where temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who supported the independence movement, was shot dead in June.
Singh said the Sikh community is still grieving Nijjar’s death and frustrated with the lack of progress in the police investigation, and the vote cancellation has “aggravated” people.
“It kind of was a slap in the face, almost you can say, to the community — especially after the death,” he says.
“You would think (the district) would actually try to work with us and in a way help us get through this tough time, but it’s actually added fuel to the fire.”
Speculation has swirled as to whether the Indian government had any role in Nijjar’s death, with the World Sikh Organization of Canada accusing Canadian police and intelligence agencies of failing to protect him, given the “known” threats to his life. His image is on the referendum poster, as is that of Talwinder Singh Parmar.
Parmer is regarded as the mastermind of the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings, the largest mass killing in Canadian history. No one survived, including the 268 Canadians aboard.
Parmer was shot dead by Indian security forces in 1992. The Air India trials began some eight years later, and Canada’s Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 found Parmar to have orchestrated the attack.
“We do not advocate, incite, provoke or promote any kind of violence, and we really have our hearts out to the victims of Air India,” said Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal counsel for Sikhs For Justice, in an interview.
“If the evidence was so ripe at that time and Parmar — if the security agencies and the Canadian government have so much evidence, he should have been convicted … but Parmar was basically extrajudicially killed and tortured to death in India.”
Talks with the school district are ongoing and the organization may take legal action, Pannun said, believing the rental agreement termination to be “unconstitutional, unjustifiable and in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
He said the pen stabbing the gun in the poster is to show that the group and its beliefs are “non-violent.” The poster has now been changed, he added, to remove the problematic images.
By email, the Ministry of Education and Child Care said local school boards are responsible for their own decisions about rental facilities.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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