The story to date:
Amid the din across the Raisina Dialogue this week, the federal government put a highlight on its demand for the banning of the separatist Khalistani group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), with the U.S. and New Zealand. On Sunday (March 23, 2025), the SFJ will maintain a “referendum” in Los Angeles among the many diaspora Sikh inhabitants for its secessionist calls for.
What occurred this week?
At a press meet after talks with New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised considerations about “illegal activities by anti-India elements”, referring to pro-Khalistan teams, specifically the SFJ that has, since 2021 been holding what it calls “referendums” for a separate Khalistan state carved out of India.
In one other dialog with U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh raised the identical considerations and demand for the U.S. to designate the SFJ a terror organisation and ban it. The SFJ referendums are held nearly all the time in cities of Western democracies, which have giant Indian diaspora populations, in addition to sturdy legal guidelines guarding “freedom of expression”. However, the variety of votes, and the unverifiable identities of voters, raises questions over whether or not that is a critical course of or one supposed to irk India. On Sunday (March 23, 2025), the group plans to carry one other such “vote” in Los Angeles. Thus far, nevertheless, not one of the international locations India has posed such requests to has complied. In an interview to The Hindu, Mr. Luxon burdened that New Zealand is a “liberal democracy”, the place lawful protests are a part of protected speech.
Since 2023, when each the U.S. and Canada started trials that implicate Indian “government agents” for an assassination plot in opposition to Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, and the killing of Canadian Khalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar respectively, the federal government has stepped up its marketing campaign in opposition to the group. The view is that a ban on the SFJ would significantly mitigate the harshness with which such circumstances are being considered, and would vindicate India’s considerations concerning the group.
What would a ban imply?
While every of the international locations that India has put in a request with has a completely different process to judge and ban teams, a ban by any of the highly effective “Five Eyes” Intelligence community of the U.S., the U.Okay., Canada, Australia and New Zealand would doubtless be adopted by all, as they share info often. The U.S., for instance, has a set process for designating Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO).
A ban decided by the U.S. Secretary of State would entail a funds and asset freeze, curbing the actions of its key figures, together with SFJ founder and immigration lawyer G.S. Pannun, in addition to prosecute them. Under the Terrorism Act, the U.Okay. Home Secretary is equally empowered to designate teams, and in Canada, the process includes a itemizing below its Anti-Terrorism Act. If India have been profitable in any of those international locations, a ban request on SFJ might probably be taken to the UN Security Council (UNSC) to be listed below its decision 1373, which might make these international locations liable to prosecute the group in accordance with its Financial Action Task Force (FATF) obligations.
Why haven’t different international locations complied?
For India, the truth that SFJ actions are seen as “incendiary, but not illegal”, with the group working freely in international locations which can be supposedly India’s closest strategic companions, is each insulting and worrying. Mr. Pannun is usually regarded by different international locations as a non-serious determine. His movies solid India as a perpetrator of human rights atrocities, and he makes wild threats in opposition to Indian embassies and its diplomats, the Indian Parliament and Air India flights. New Delhi has maintained that these threats should be taken severely and investigated, pointing to comparable Canadian apathy within the Eighties, which allowed for the 1985 bombing of the Air India Kanishka flight, by which 329 individuals have been killed. The SFJ has glorified the Kanishka bombing mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar in addition to different terrorists chargeable for the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
State police forces and the National Investigation Agency have registered not less than 122 circumstances in opposition to SFJ since 2018 and 105 individuals have been arrested, whereas the federal government not too long ago renewed a 2019 ban on its actions below the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Indian authorities accuse SFJ and Mr. Pannun of instigating violence, sabotage of railway operations, gun-running in conspiracy with Pakistan’s ISI, in addition to attempting to impress Sikh troopers within the Indian Army to abandon it.
A ban by any of the highly effective “Five Eyes” Intelligence community of the U.S., the U.Okay., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, would doubtless be adopted by all, as they share info often
Published – March 23, 2025 06:22 am IST
