Khalistan machinery in North America more intricate and troubling: Report
TEL AVIV: Although the terror group Sikhs for Justice attracted several thousand participants to its referendum on creating a sovereign Sikh homeland held in Ottawa, such numbers cannot shroud the stark reality that democracies must protect citizens not only from extremism, but also from the quieter, systemic exploitations that destroy lives more relentlessly, a report said on Thursday.
It added that this demands decisive action from Western governments - dismantling Canada's Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) fraud chains, tightening regulation in the trucking industry, and targetting the financial networks that sustain radical outfits.
"Organizers from Sikhs for Justice reported over 53,000 participants from across Canada in the unofficial vote, which asked a simple yes/no question on creating a sovereign Sikh homeland. Crowds waved Khalistan flags, chanted slogans, and celebrated the turnout as a strong statement, though the ballot holds no legal weight in Canada or India," wrote Zahack Tanvir, founder and editor of UK-based media outlet The Milli Chronicle, in the 'Times of Israel'.
The event, criticized for inflammatory chants and flag desecration, and described as "farcical" by India's High Commissioner to Canada, took place on the same day as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's G20 meeting with PM Narendra Modi in Johannesburg, which underscored warming Canada-India ties.
"The referendum-staged by a separatist organization long accused of promoting a divisive and often inflammatory agenda - once again revealed the degree to which the Khalistan movement has become a geopolitical irritant. Far from a simple diaspora-driven advocacy campaign, its current machinery in North America has grown into something more intricate and more troubling," Tanvir added.
Citing the American scholar and political scientist Allen Hampton, the report noted that in his widely discussed investigation for The Milli Chronicle titled 'Khalistan Expose: Inside the Web of Fake Jobs, LMIA Fraud, and Trucking Scams', he argued that what appears on the surface as political mobilization conceals a sprawling and exploitative underground economy. (IANS)