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Weeks before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aired an explosive accusation that Indian officials may have been behind the slaying of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia, Ottawa asked its closest allies, including Washington, to publicly condemn the murder. But the overtures were rebuffed, underscoring the diplomatic balancing act facing the Biden administration and its allies as they work to court an Asian power seen as a crucial counterweight to China.
Ultimately, the alleged assassination on June 18 of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was privately raised by several senior officials of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing countries in the weeks before September’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi. But it was not mentioned publicly ahead of the meeting Western leaders viewed as an important coming-out party for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Trudeau’s announcement about “credible allegations,” made alone and in dramatic fashion before Parliament on Monday, caused a seismic fissure in India-Canada relations that led to the expulsion of an Indian diplomat in Ottawa, who Canadian officials disclosed was the station chief for the external Indian intelligence service. New Delhi responded by kicking out a Canadian diplomat, who was identified by the Hindustan Times newspaper as the top Canadian spy in India.
“The government of India needs to take this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday. “We are doing that. We are not looking to provoke or escalate. We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them."
The Indian government issued a statement Tuesday rejecting Trudeau’s accusation as “absurd and motivated.” India’s Ministry of External Affairs went on to say that the allegations “seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The inaction of the Canadian Government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern.”
Nijjar was designated a terrorist by Indian security agencies in 2020 and accused of supporting attacks in India’s Punjab state, home to about 16 million Sikhs. Indian authorities, who said Nijjar headed a group called the Khalistan Tiger Force, sought his extradition from Canada in 2022, the same year they linked him to the slaying of a Hindu priest in Punjab.
The movement Nijjar was part of seeks to form a breakaway state called Khalistan in the Punjab region and has supporters within India and among the large global Sikh diaspora. Thousands died during a separatist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s and ’90s, and the Indian government this year launched a huge manhunt for a pro-Khalistan militant leader.
Months before Nijjar was shot by masked gunmen in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver, India ratcheted up a campaign to pressure countries including Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States — home to significant Sikh communities and frequent pro-Khalistan demonstrations — to crack down on the movement.
Earlier this year in London and San Francisco, protesters stormed the grounds of Indian diplomatic missions to raise the movement’s flag, angering the New Delhi government. Indian officials say pro-Khalistan supporters have also targeted Indian diplomats overseas, fuming that Western governments provide inadequate security.
The controversy comes at an awkward moment as Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Modi over India’s authoritarian backsliding.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, said the dispute poses a dilemma for Western governments, including the Biden administration, which has articulated a “values-based foreign policy that’s meant to emphasize rights and democracy.”
The controversy comes at an awkward moment as Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Modi over India’s authoritarian backsliding.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, said the dispute poses a dilemma for Western governments, including the Biden administration, which has articulated a “values-based foreign policy that’s meant to emphasize rights and democracy.”
“The U.S. needs to walk a diplomatic tightrope in that Canada is an ally and neighbor while India is a key strategic partner,” Kugelman said. “There will be pressure on Washington to weigh in in support of Canada, but at the same time it values, in a big way, its relationship with India."
The G-20 summit, which took place Sept. 9 and 10, turned out to be fraught, with Trudeau visibly sidelined and denied formal, bilateral talks with Modi. The Indian prime minister’s office announced on Sept. 10 that the two leaders had discussed the Khalistan issue on the sidelines of the summit and that Modi had conveyed “India’s strong concerns about continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada.” Trudeau stayed a day longer than planned in New Delhi, which the Canadian High Commission, or embassy, attributed to a technical problem with his plane.
After the announcement in Parliament, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters that Trudeau had raised the allegations with President Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and that they would be a topic of discussion at the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week.
Washington described itself as “deeply concerned” about the allegations and said it was critical that “Canada’s investigation proceed and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” according to a statement by White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said her country had raised the issue with India at “senior levels” and expressed her “deep concern,” according to a spokesman.
Karthik Nachiappan, an expert on India-Canada relations at the National University of Singapore, said that the presence of Khalistan supporters in Canada has long been the “cancerous tissue” in the two countries’ relations, but that the alleged assassination — if true — could create “much more damage on the entire body.”
“Canada is a G-7 country, and it’s also an ally of countries that have similar problems like the United Kingdom, like Australia, like the United States — which also increasingly care about this issue of foreign interference,” Nachiappan said. “It’s not just about the killing anymore. It’s become a much larger issue that deals with geopolitics, that deals with how countries like China, Russia — and now India has been added to the mix — are influencing and trying to interfere in liberal democracies."
Underscoring India’s concern about the pro-Khalistan movement, Indian officials this year demanded that several Western countries take a harder stance against its supporters, including breaking up protests outside India’s overseas missions. In March, India removed concrete security barriers outside the British High Commission in New Delhi in an apparent move to punish Britain for failing to protect India’s own High Commission in London, which had been stormed and defaced by pro-Khalistani demonstrators.
Western officials say their governments have told Indian officials they will increase security for India’s overseas missions and prosecute any criminal activity, but remain committed to allowing peaceful assembly and political speech in their capitals.
Trudeau’s disclosure was particularly stunning because speculation had circulated for months among pro-Khalistan sympathizers — as well as Indian nationalists — that Nijjar’s shooting may have been linked to two other deaths that occurred within 45 days.
In May, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, also designated by India as a terrorist, was killed by masked gunmen in Lahore, Pakistan. And days before Nijjar’s shooting, Avtar Singh Khanda, a British-based pro-Khalistan leader who raised the movement’s flag above the Indian High Commission in London, died in a hospital in Birmingham. (British police told the BBC on Tuesday they did not suspect foul play in Khanda’s death.)
The Indian government did not comment on the deaths at the time. But they were widely cheered in India, and theories of a state connection became so widespread that popular nationalist channels and pro-government analysts obliquely praised India’s uncompromising approach to Sikh separatism, and the arrival of Indian intelligence services to the top echelon of the world’s covert operators.
One of the channels, Zee News, asked whether Nijjar’s death “will blow away even Israel’s mind.” Another, Times Now, wondered whether India’s Research and Analysis Wing, the external intelligence service, had become “the new Mossad.”
Ultimately, the alleged assassination on June 18 of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was privately raised by several senior officials of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing countries in the weeks before September’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi. But it was not mentioned publicly ahead of the meeting Western leaders viewed as an important coming-out party for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Trudeau’s announcement about “credible allegations,” made alone and in dramatic fashion before Parliament on Monday, caused a seismic fissure in India-Canada relations that led to the expulsion of an Indian diplomat in Ottawa, who Canadian officials disclosed was the station chief for the external Indian intelligence service. New Delhi responded by kicking out a Canadian diplomat, who was identified by the Hindustan Times newspaper as the top Canadian spy in India.
“The government of India needs to take this matter with the utmost seriousness,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday. “We are doing that. We are not looking to provoke or escalate. We are simply laying out the facts as we understand them."
The Indian government issued a statement Tuesday rejecting Trudeau’s accusation as “absurd and motivated.” India’s Ministry of External Affairs went on to say that the allegations “seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The inaction of the Canadian Government on this matter has been a long-standing and continuing concern.”
Nijjar was designated a terrorist by Indian security agencies in 2020 and accused of supporting attacks in India’s Punjab state, home to about 16 million Sikhs. Indian authorities, who said Nijjar headed a group called the Khalistan Tiger Force, sought his extradition from Canada in 2022, the same year they linked him to the slaying of a Hindu priest in Punjab.
The movement Nijjar was part of seeks to form a breakaway state called Khalistan in the Punjab region and has supporters within India and among the large global Sikh diaspora. Thousands died during a separatist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s and ’90s, and the Indian government this year launched a huge manhunt for a pro-Khalistan militant leader.
Months before Nijjar was shot by masked gunmen in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver, India ratcheted up a campaign to pressure countries including Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States — home to significant Sikh communities and frequent pro-Khalistan demonstrations — to crack down on the movement.
Earlier this year in London and San Francisco, protesters stormed the grounds of Indian diplomatic missions to raise the movement’s flag, angering the New Delhi government. Indian officials say pro-Khalistan supporters have also targeted Indian diplomats overseas, fuming that Western governments provide inadequate security.
The controversy comes at an awkward moment as Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Modi over India’s authoritarian backsliding.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, said the dispute poses a dilemma for Western governments, including the Biden administration, which has articulated a “values-based foreign policy that’s meant to emphasize rights and democracy.”
The controversy comes at an awkward moment as Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Modi over India’s authoritarian backsliding.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, said the dispute poses a dilemma for Western governments, including the Biden administration, which has articulated a “values-based foreign policy that’s meant to emphasize rights and democracy.”
“The U.S. needs to walk a diplomatic tightrope in that Canada is an ally and neighbor while India is a key strategic partner,” Kugelman said. “There will be pressure on Washington to weigh in in support of Canada, but at the same time it values, in a big way, its relationship with India."
The G-20 summit, which took place Sept. 9 and 10, turned out to be fraught, with Trudeau visibly sidelined and denied formal, bilateral talks with Modi. The Indian prime minister’s office announced on Sept. 10 that the two leaders had discussed the Khalistan issue on the sidelines of the summit and that Modi had conveyed “India’s strong concerns about continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada.” Trudeau stayed a day longer than planned in New Delhi, which the Canadian High Commission, or embassy, attributed to a technical problem with his plane.
After the announcement in Parliament, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters that Trudeau had raised the allegations with President Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and that they would be a topic of discussion at the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week.
Washington described itself as “deeply concerned” about the allegations and said it was critical that “Canada’s investigation proceed and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” according to a statement by White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said her country had raised the issue with India at “senior levels” and expressed her “deep concern,” according to a spokesman.
Karthik Nachiappan, an expert on India-Canada relations at the National University of Singapore, said that the presence of Khalistan supporters in Canada has long been the “cancerous tissue” in the two countries’ relations, but that the alleged assassination — if true — could create “much more damage on the entire body.”
“Canada is a G-7 country, and it’s also an ally of countries that have similar problems like the United Kingdom, like Australia, like the United States — which also increasingly care about this issue of foreign interference,” Nachiappan said. “It’s not just about the killing anymore. It’s become a much larger issue that deals with geopolitics, that deals with how countries like China, Russia — and now India has been added to the mix — are influencing and trying to interfere in liberal democracies."
Underscoring India’s concern about the pro-Khalistan movement, Indian officials this year demanded that several Western countries take a harder stance against its supporters, including breaking up protests outside India’s overseas missions. In March, India removed concrete security barriers outside the British High Commission in New Delhi in an apparent move to punish Britain for failing to protect India’s own High Commission in London, which had been stormed and defaced by pro-Khalistani demonstrators.
Western officials say their governments have told Indian officials they will increase security for India’s overseas missions and prosecute any criminal activity, but remain committed to allowing peaceful assembly and political speech in their capitals.
Trudeau’s disclosure was particularly stunning because speculation had circulated for months among pro-Khalistan sympathizers — as well as Indian nationalists — that Nijjar’s shooting may have been linked to two other deaths that occurred within 45 days.
In May, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, also designated by India as a terrorist, was killed by masked gunmen in Lahore, Pakistan. And days before Nijjar’s shooting, Avtar Singh Khanda, a British-based pro-Khalistan leader who raised the movement’s flag above the Indian High Commission in London, died in a hospital in Birmingham. (British police told the BBC on Tuesday they did not suspect foul play in Khanda’s death.)
The Indian government did not comment on the deaths at the time. But they were widely cheered in India, and theories of a state connection became so widespread that popular nationalist channels and pro-government analysts obliquely praised India’s uncompromising approach to Sikh separatism, and the arrival of Indian intelligence services to the top echelon of the world’s covert operators.
One of the channels, Zee News, asked whether Nijjar’s death “will blow away even Israel’s mind.” Another, Times Now, wondered whether India’s Research and Analysis Wing, the external intelligence service, had become “the new Mossad.”
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