Why India must support protesting Canadian truckers against Justin Trudeau

Karma sometimes arrives early, and with delightful symmetry. Last winter, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was cheering Punjab farm protests while rich middlemen in tractors violently laid siege on Delhi, assaulting hundreds of policemen and vandalising places and symbols of national pride.

Trudeau was busy scoring cheap points with his Punjabi vote bank, a large section of which support Khalistani separatism and extremism.

On Saturday, Trudeau and his family had to be moved to a secret location when thousands of angry truckers swooped down on capital Ottawa with their giant rigs. They are protesting against Trudeau’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates required to cross the United States border.

The alikeness with the Red Fort violence on 2021 Republic Day is unsettling.

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The Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ is being accused of dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrating the National War Memorial.

The parallel doesn’t end there. Pro-Khalistan Canadian MP Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal has been opposing the truckers’ strike but his brother-in-law Jodhveer Dhaliwal has apparently donated $13,000 to the Freedom Convoy.

A number of south Asians, including Sikhs, are part of the protest too. 

During the highway blocking, often-violent farm protests, Trudeau had said: “The situation is concerning. And we are all worried about family and friends. Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest. We believe in the importance of dialogue.”

India should return the favour now. It could issue a statement in support of the protesting truckers. In diplomacy, you must drive up the cost for your opponent to act against you. 

India must say how concerned we are with the situation in Canada. That we defend the right of the truckers to protest peacefully. And that we hope that Trudeau will enter into meaningful negotiations with an attitude of respect for freedom. human rights and dignity.

Trudeau is a repeat offender when it comes to giving safe sanctuary to Khalistani extremists and pandering to them. In fact, quite a few colleagues in his government are Khalistan sympathisers.

In 2018, for instance, Canada bowed to domestic pressure and erased all references to Sikh and Khalistani extremism in its report on terrorist threats.

The “updated” version of the ‘2018 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada’ was released about 24 hours before Trudeau was to attend a Vasakhi parade, organised in Vancouver by the Khalsa Diwan Society, with defence minister Harjit Sajjan, another Khalistan sympathiser. Then Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh refused to meet Sajjan when he visited India.

Trudeau attended a Khalsa Day event in Toronto where Khalistan flags and the portrait of former Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale were displayed.

The Ontario Assembly, dominated by Trudeau's Liberal Party, passed a resolution in 2017 condemning Sikh “genocide” of 1984. Canada's High Commissioner to India had to apologise after a former CRPF officer was initially denied entry at Vancouver airport. Media reports said he was accused of serving a government that engaged in “terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide”.

It is time India dabbled in Canada’s internal affairs in the same preachy and sanctimonious way Canada wades into ours. Trudeau can hide from protesters, but he should not be allowed to hide from his own dangerous hypocrisy.

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