Previous posters from Khalistani groups had demanded the deaths of India’s high commissioner to Canada and consul generals.
On Wednesday, India summoned the Canadian high commissioner, Cameron MacKay, to South Block and lodged a protest. The protest note demanded that the Trudeau government immediately remove the posters at the Surrey Gurdwara, investigate the threats to Prime Minister Modi, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, and India’s top diplomats in Canada, and take strong action against the perpetrators. Simultaneously, India also conveyed a protest to Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.
- Indian officials say that Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar will now be guarded by the Central Reserve Security Force (CRPF), the country’s elite VIP security unit, after receiving threats from separatist groups.
- A Delhi police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that police had also received inputs about threats to Jaishankar.
- Nijjar’s death sparked a diplomatic crisis between India and Canada, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that there may be a “potential link” between Indian government agents and the killing of Nijjar, a Canadian citizen. India has dismissed the accusation as “absurd and motivated.”
On September 22, India suspended new visas for Canadians. On October 3, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said that Canada wants private talks with India to resolve the diplomatic dispute, which has since escalated with India asking Ottawa to withdraw 41 diplomats.
Trudeau said that Canada did not want to escalate the dispute and would continue to engage with India responsibly and constructively. However, Canada has not shared any credible evidence with India.
India has upgraded the security of Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar to Z-category, the highest level of security, after Khalistani groups in Canada put up posters calling for his assassination, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Khalistani group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) posted posters on Tuesday calling for a “referendum” on whether to create a separate Sikh state carved out of India. The posters were put up outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, where Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed by unidentified men on June 18 in an alleged gang war.
Sources familiar with the matter said that the “referendum” will be held in Vancouver on October 29, after a protest that will be launched on October 21 from Surrey to the Indian consulate.
Previous Khalistani posters had called for the assassination of India’s high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and consul generals Manish and Apoorva Srivastava.
On Tuesday, the banned Khalistani group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) put up posters outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, where Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed by unidentified men on June 18 in an alleged gang war. The posters announced a “referendum” on whether to create a separate Sikh state carved out of India.
Sources familiar with the matter say that the posters call for a “referendum” to be held in Vancouver on October 29, after a protest that will begin in Surrey on October 21 and end at the Indian consulate.
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Previous Khalistani posters had called for the assassination of India’s high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and consul generals Manish and Apoorva Srivastava, according to one of the people cited above.
The posters appear at a time when Khalistani extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has compared the Khalistani separatist movement to the situation in Palestine, and threatened that the SFJ will launch Hamas-like attacks.
