Sikh activists in US, Canada face threats, a year after Trudeau linked their leader’s killing to India – World

WASHINGTON/TORONTO: As a physician specializing in addictions, Dr. Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh American elected to the California Assembly, was accustomed to risky situations.

Still, Bains said she was shocked when four men showed up at her office last August, shortly after California passed its resolution declaring the killing of thousands of Sikhs in India in 1984 a genocide. The men, who appeared to be of Indian descent, warned that they would “do whatever it takes to come after you,” Bains said.

The threat was just the beginning.

Since last summer, Bains said, she has received more than 100 threatening text messages. She has seen someone taking photos of her Bakersfield home from a parked truck and the lock on her mailbox has been repeatedly broken.

Bains reported the incident to her local police office and the security of her home to the sergeant-at-arms of the state Assembly. Reuters did not view the text messages.

In late September, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government had credible evidence implicating the Indian government in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia, Bains said the sergeant-at-arms had conducted a security assessment of her home and urged her to take precautions.

The FBI contacted her in October about the threats at her office, Bains said.

Bains said she has started screening phone calls and avoiding traveling alone, occasionally requesting a security detail at official events.

“My life has changed,” she said Reuters. “I don’t go anywhere alone anymore. I make sure my staff is always with me, which is hard for someone as independent as I am.”

Sikh separatist runs in Indian elections from prison, government worries

Reuters spoke with 19 Sikh community leaders, including three U.S. elected officials, who said they or their organizations have been targeted with threats and intimidation in the United States and Canada over the past year — even as law enforcement agencies conduct criminal investigations into the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada and the foiled assassination attempt on another separatist leader in the U.S.

The Sikhs Reuters Those interviewed described being harassed online; being surveilled in their homes and places of worship; having personal information released online; or being doxxed and ‘swatted’, where they file a false police report to provoke a police response.

Seven Sikh activists told Reuters that the FBI or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned them last year that their lives could be in danger, without specifying the source of the threat.

An FBI official said the agency issues such alerts when it receives credible evidence of a threat, but declined to comment further. The Canadian Federal Police declined to confirm how many people were ordered to issue alerts.

The FBI also warned the Sikh community more broadly about “transnational repression,” efforts by a foreign state to intimidate or threaten political opponents in another country, by issuing a public notice urging people to report threats or intimidation.

FBI officials and attendees reported that there were also two invitation-only meetings for Sikh advocacy groups.

US and Canada investigate

Meanwhile, four Indian nationals are facing charges in Canada for murder and conspiracy in connection with the June 2023 fatal shooting of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside his gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Surrey, British Columbia.

Lawyers for the four men did not respond to requests for comment.

Separately, the U.S. Justice Department has charged Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta with attempting to arrange the assassination of separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun at the request of an Indian intelligence official. Gupta has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in New York. His lawyer declined to comment.

India denies involvement in the murder of Nijjar and the attempted murder of Pannun. It has promised to investigate the plot against Pannun, but not against Nijjar.

“Nijjar was someone who was labelled as a terrorist,” Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s High Commissioner to Canada, told Reuters in an interview in June. “I have no love lost for him.”

Many of the threats described Reuters by the Sikh activists came from anonymous accounts on X. Others came from unknown phone numbers and anonymous text messages, they said.

Reuters could not determine the origin of the threats.

At least six activists suspected that the Indian government or its supporters were behind the intimidation, but admitted that this was difficult to prove, especially when the threats came from anonymous parties.

US says satisfied with Indian steps in assassination plot

Kanwarpal Singh, political secretary of the Punjab-based Dal Khalsa group, which lobbies for a separate state, has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to smear and isolate Sikh separatists. He did not specify whether he was referring to separatists in India or abroad.

The Indian embassy in Washington and Modi’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Verma did not respond to an email seeking information about threats against Sikh separatists and other activists or the criminal cases in Canada and the United States.

In a conversation with ReutersTwo FBI officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not comment directly on India’s possible role in transnational repression. One said they were “looking at a very broad range of aggressor countries.”

FBI officials said it can be difficult to determine whether the threats come from a foreign government or from criminals using similar tactics to extort victims.

Like Nijjar, Pannun is a proponent of a fringe demand to secede from India and create an independent state called Khalistan. The movement led to a violent insurgency in the Indian state of Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s before being crushed by Delhi.

Time to ‘plan your murder’

Pannun says he continues to receive violent threats online, even after the Justice Department exposed the assassination plot last November.

“Wherever you run, I will come, enter it and kill you,” reads a Hindi email dated May 7, reviewed by Reuters.

In April the X account was @randomatheist_ wrote to Pannun: “Polonium-210 has arrived in DC,” in an apparent reference to the toxic radioactive isotope used to kill former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Pannun’s organization Sikhs for Justice has an office in Washington, DC

X did not respond to requests for comment.

Pannun asked further questions about the threats to US law enforcement.

In 2019, India declared Sikhs for Justice an illegal association, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun and 15 other members of the organization were charged a year later with terrorism-related crimes, including trying to encourage a mutiny in the Indian army.

Pannun denies the allegations.

Pritpal Singh, a supporter of a separate Sikh state and founder of the American Sikh Caucus Committee, an activist group that has not taken a position on secession, also told Reuters that the threats and surveillance continued after he received a warning from the FBI in June last year.

A few days after the warning, he said, a strange car pulled up and started watching his California home.

Canada and the US worked closely on possible links between India and the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar

He said he noticed a second case of surveillance in November.

The episodes were captured by home security cameras and the video was viewed by ReutersPritpal said he reported the surveillance to the FBI.

On June 18, the anniversary of Nijjar’s assassination, an account on X wrote in Hindi that it was time to “plan your assassination.” Another X account wrote, “RIP Pritpal.” Reuters saw screenshots of both messages, which his family reported to the FBI.

‘A kind of worst case scenario’

Nate Schenkkan, senior director of research at the nonprofit Freedom House in Washington, D.C., which monitors global civil liberties, said the campaign “represents a kind of worst-case scenario for transnational repression — when a large state acts completely outside the law and uses every tool at its disposal to silence dissent in another country.”

He said India appeared to ignore the possible diplomatic, legal and political consequences of the campaign, citing prosecutions underway in the US and Canada.

Harjap Singh Japhi, a grocery store owner in Greenwood, Indiana, who has been charged by India with terrorism-related offenses over his past involvement with Sikhs for Justice, told Reuters that FBI agents came to his home in the fall of 2022 to ask about his possible involvement in a bombing in the late 1980s.

The agents told him that India had sent the agency some documents related to the attack.

Japhi, 44, said he was just a child at the time.

Japhi’s wife Rajvinder Shokar also told Reuters about the FBI visit.

FBI officials told the news agency they could not comment on Japhi’s case. Reuters could not independently confirm the bombing story or the visit to the couple’s home.

According to the FBI, false referrals are a common feature of transnational repression. The FBI is working with local law enforcement agencies to determine how to more rigorously investigate referrals, especially when the target is a political opponent.

Japhi said that the day after Nijjar’s murder, he received an anonymous phone call from someone posing as a member of an Indian organized crime syndicate, warning him that he was next.

In December, a now-deleted X account doxed Japhi by posting his home and business addresses and local health department inspection data online, according to screenshots shared with Reuters.

Japhi said he reported the threatening phone call and doxxing to the FBI.

Bains told Reuters she was unsure whether she had faced cross-border repression by the Indian government.

In May, the California Assembly passed a bill she introduced that would train state law enforcement to identify and respond to cross-border repression.

“When I experience it, more people experience it,” she said. “And that impacts everyone, not just the Sikh community.”