In what I’d call a desperate turn of events, it looks like the Canadian Border agency tried to pull a fast one by trying to deport Laibar Singh yet again, but this time scheduled his deportation for 4:30 AM, a time which they probably felt would offer the least amount of resistance.

None the less the community seems to have pulled through in organizing itself well enough to have blocked off access to Laibar Singh by the authorities, once again delaying his deportation.

The whole incident does offer a new perspective on, “Singho Baraana Bujgay”, and it did get the community up and to a gurdwara at 4 in the morning. All the same I wonder how long the community and the federal government will continue going toe to toe on this, especially since the community has opted to pick up the tab for Mr. Singhs medical expenses.

Anyways check out the CBC news article for more details, or check out the youtube vid’s below, and the CBC news report video.

I haven’t heard much about the Laibar Singh case out here on the East Coast. It hasn’t been headline news and it hasn’t been a topic of discussion on any of the popular talk radio programs that I listen to, so all I really know about the case is what I found out while checking the various news outlets and snooping around on some West Cost blogs.

Basically, Laibar Singh came into Canada on forged passports, filed a refugee claiment saying he fears being tortured and prosecuted if he returns to India because he’s been unjustly blamed for terrorism. The fed’s end up not buying his story and order him out. He then seeks refuge of the Sikh Sangat, and then suffers a stroke which has left him a quadrapalegic. The community again files for asylum on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, stating that he’s in no condition to be deported and will not recieve the care he now needs if sent back to India. The government again turns a deaf year to all the lobbying and Labair Singh was to have been flown back to India last Sunday. Fortunately for him, the Sangat stood by him and came out in the thousands to protest at the airport, blocking all traffic and making it impossible to get Singh on the plane. Left with no choice the government granted Singh an extension and so thats where things were left, last I checked.

Not having all the facts let alone most of them, I still have a hard time believing the original refugee claim. Not that it can’t be true, just seems like everyone plus their mother has been taught to use it. Same time you can’t blame the portion of society, who wants the man out, he did after all break the law and could potentially be a burden on the system, and the law is the law, so why make exceptions or pick up the tab for his misfortunes when there are others who may very well be more deserving.

All that aside though, the fact that he is in the unfortunate circumstance that he’s in; having no family, and not being able to begin help himself, it’s only fitting that society as a whole lends out a helping hand. Also, with a community willing to pick up the tab, its hard to imagine what burden he can be on the system if any, so why make a fuss over it.

The politics of the matter already have the conservatives red in the face, and having a reputation of being anti immigration you would think they of all people would want to do something to change that. Then again, if nothing else comes from this, as someone else had pointed out to me earlier, its always good to see a community known throughout the mainstream for its infighting and distention amongst its groups, to have come together and put up a united front.

It seems as though in recent weeks there’s been a lot of news coverage on the accommodation of minorities who come to this country, and when is enough, enough. From the allegations of Peel Memorial Hospital discriminating against hiring nurses who can’t speak Punjabi, the controversy at Pearson with Muslims wanting to install foot washing basins. even onto the political stage with the platform of John Tory and his PC party to support and fund faith based schools [attended by only 2% of Ontario’s ethnic minorties], at the end of the day the news is everywhere and it seems as though it has everyone talking.

I figure a good portion of this coverage and dialogue could be be accredited to Bruce Allen, even though his comments didn’t really come to my attention until this morning; despite having been posted in the comments. None the less, it seems that what Allen had to say really woke quite a few people up and really got everyones attention, including C.O.S.S’s. For the most part I have to commend COSS and more specifically Supreet Singh for taking a decisive stand and getting things done. I also have to commend Singh for going on public radio and for the most part being able to hold his own against an audience and host that were pitted against him.

All the same, the discussion isn’t a new one and the arguments don’t seem to ever change. On one hand you have those who feel that everything they stand and believe in is being taken away from them, while on the other you have those who just want an equal playing field so they to can get a piece of the same pie that everyone else has been enjoying for the last so many decades.

Most who came here, came with the same goals and hopes. A fresh new start, a do over. For some Canada was everything they dreamt for, a country where they could take refuge under the charter and its laws. It’s this very bond that individuals have with the charter and the freedom’s that it allows, which creates and breeds most of the animosity that exists between groups on both sides of the argument; those who feel we’re not doing enough and those who feel we’ve done to much.

For those who lack rights the charter has been the defining corner stone which in due time ensures that their own rights are granted and protected. For those who have rights it’s the constant fear that with the ever evolving and encompassing nature of Canada’s charter, that the Canada that “they” have come to know and love will one day be taken away from them,

You’d be hard pressed to blame either side for feeling the way that it does, since it’s only a matter of time before yesterdays minority becomes tomorrows majority who in turn goes on to oppress against next weeks up ‘n coming oppressed group. But amongst all that irony what remains the most ironic is that for a country who’s entire identity and culture is based around its ability to accept all as being equal; it remains in constant struggle to do so.

Anyways getting back to Allen’s comments. I’ve listened to them a few times now. I’ve also been able to listen to his justification of his comments. A little, too late? Maybe. Succumbing to pressure amidst the growing public furor to make amends with his advertisers? Possibly. But regardless of how you interrupt what Allen said, he did bring the reality of the constant struggle that minorities face once again to the forefront of public discussion and its the hypocrisy highlighted through such discussions that forces the majority to at some point take a look in the mirror and realize what they’re doing and help ignite a flame amongst the minorities to remind them, that they still have a long way to go.

After all as Tejdeep Singh more eloquently writes, its the constant pushing and challenging of the status-quo which continues to drive us forward setting the on going precedent while leading by example.

Allens original comments

His follow up, clarification

Looks like Colbert is right once again, and I guess this blog only echo’s what he ’s saying, but eh I still think posting and linking stuff does more then most hunger strikes off yesterday ever did. But then again I’m also part of the minority that think this kid had it coming, and don’t see him getting all barbecued as being that big of a deal. (A sad day when the only person who agrees with you is Fox News).

But in all seriousness, although the force may have been a bit excessive, there was a reason no one jumped to his defence, and it wasn’t fear or not knowing what was happening. It was because people couldn’t stand him. If you watch the videos where he’s being escorted out, you can hear the applause from the audience once the police grab him. For those who think they were cheering at his comments, watch the video again and pay closer attention. Most people let out a sigh the second he started patronizing Kerry, and were relieved when someone came and finally shut him up.

My apathy towards the man has little to do with his opinion or his message. It’s not that I don’t think he has a right to say what he had to say, or that I’m against anything he was saying. It was the way he was saying it which hit a nerve, avoiding the point with his long winded “build up”. At least if he had gotten to the point we’d have all heard Kerry reply. But instead we hear this Nancy boy screaming at the top of his lungs because the police were there wanting to escort him out for having caused a disturbance prior to having even gone before the mic.

Then again at least he helped give me something to post about, so digg, link and post it.

The Air India incident has long been dubbed by many as an international “whose done it”. The finger pointing never stops at any level, from who was responsible for the bombings, to who was responsible for mucking up the investigation. Personally, I’ve always ascribed to the Soft Target view as published by Globe and Mail journalists in contrast to the CBC’s take on things, but had little in way of public record to support that angle. However a recent confession of sorts by the very officer directly involved in bringing down Parmar seems to have turned the tide of things.

The officer, DSP Harmail Singh Chandi, recently came forward and basically acknowledged the following as being fact:

1. Parmar was killed while in police custody after having been arrested held and interrogated for five days.

   All the official reports which have Parmar being killed in a old western style shoot ‘em up.
   

2. Evidence was gathered, audio tapes, written confessions, but were destroyed at the bequest of higher ups in the Government in an effort to protect those involved, particularly to remove any trace of Government involvement.

   Acknowledges the fact that the Indian Government had direct involvement in the Air India Bombings
   

3. In Parmar’s confessions, he singled out Lakhwinder Singh Brar (head of the ISYF) as being the brains behind the operation.

   This would pit Brar, who some had suspected and accused of being GOI, as having a direct role and thereby being responsible for the AI Bombings. Also due to the alleged government protection of Lakhwinder Singh, by association dub him to be a Governments official, acting on their behalf. Or as many others have come to say it, claiming him to be a ‘Go-erment Da Bunda’.

The fact that the following has been noticed and noted in the public record of the AI Inquiry is huge in part because it officially points the finger at the GOI for having been responsible in part for orchestrating these heinous acts. Secondly it points fingers at both Parmar and Brar for having masterminded and carrying out the bombings. Finally, and I guess for some the biggest shocker of all, calls out Lakhwinder Singh and the Federation for having been instruments of the Government.

Although it’s still too soon to know what the fall out from all this will be, I’m sure its going to turn a lot of heads and raise a whole load of new questions, from all sides. Particularly who is this DSP, why did he come out now, is his confession not an admission of guilt to having committed several crimes and if so does he not stand to be prosecuted for those crimes, who is the DSP’s daddy and what does he do, and a whole load else.

But more then anything else it introduces for the first time in a long while, an interesting new twist in what has already become one complex web of truths, mis-truths and lies.

—

For those interested in whats being said about the latest in the papers check out:

• http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2…
• http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew…
• http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2007/07/…
• http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.h..
• More…

Or you could read below from the actual source - Tehelka.com

OPERATION SILENCE

The police encounter of Kanishka bombing’s alleged mastermind, Talwinder Parmar, may have been staged to save the real players. Vikram Jit Singh reports

Fifteen years after Babbar Khalsa International leader Talwinder Singh Parmar, one of the two alleged masterminds of the mid-air bombing of Air India’s Kanishka airplane, was shown as having being killed in an encounter in Punjab, retired Punjab Police DSP Harmail Singh Chandi, who nabbed Parmar from Jammu in September 1992 and interrogated him for five days before he was killed along with five others, has come forward with the claim that Parmar was killed in police custody on the orders of senior police officers, who also asked his confession record to be destroyed. In his confession, Parmar had named Lakhbir Singh Brar “Rode”, nephew of the late Bhindranwale and head of the banned International Sikh Youth Federation, as the mastermind of the bombing. Rode, who is now said to be holed up in Lahore, has never figured in the investigations of either the CBI or the Canadian authorities.

Chandi has brought forward the entire record of Parmar’s confession, including audio tapes and statements, before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the John Major Commission of Inquiry that is reinvestigating the June 23, 1985 blast that claimed 331 lives off the Irish coast. Chandi had been ordered by senior officers to destroy the records but he retained them secretly. The record was brought before the Major Commission due to seven-year-long investigations by the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO), a Chandigarh-based ngo that conducted interviews of Parmar’s associates in India and Canada and pieced together a comprehensive report. The PHRO’s Principal Investigator Sarbjit Singh and lawyer Rajvinder Singh Bains flew to Canada along with Harmail in June and produced their findings before the Commission’s counsels.

A Canadian citizen, Parmar was shown as having been killed in an exchange of fire between police and six militants in the wee hours of October 15, 1992, near village Kang Arian in Phillar sub-division. However, evidence brought forward by Harmail (who was then DSP, Phillaur) shows that Parmar was interrogated between October 9 and 14 by senior police officers, where he revealed that the blasts were instigated by Lakhbir Singh Brar Rode.

Parmar’s confession reads: “Around May 1985, a functionary of the International Sikh Youth Federation came to me and introduced himself as Lakhbir Singh and asked me for help in conducting some violent activities to express the resentment of the Sikhs. I told him to come after a few days so that I could arrange for dynamite and battery etc. He told me that he would first like to see a trial of the blast…After about four days, Lakhbir Singh and another youth, Inderjit Singh Reyat, both came to me. We went into the jungle (of British Columbia). There we joined a dynamite stick with a battery and triggered off a blast. Lakhbir and Inderjit, even at that time, had in their minds a plan to blast an aeroplane. I was not too keen on this plan but agreed to arrange for the dynamite sticks. Inderjit wanted to use for this purpose a transistor fitted with a battery…That very day, they took dynamite sticks from me and left.

“Then Lakhbir Singh, Inderjit Singh and their accomplice, Manjit Singh, made a plan to plant bombs in an Air India (AI) plane leaving from Toronto via London for Delhi and another flight that was to leave Tokyo for Bangkok. Lakhbir Singh got the seat booking done from Vancouver to Tokyo and then onwards to Bangkok, while Manjit Singh got it done from Vancouver to Toronto and then from Toronto to Delhi. Inderjit prepared the bags for the flights, which were loaded with dynamite bombs fitted with a battery and transistor. They decided that the suitcases will be booked but they themselves will not travel by the same flights although they will take the boarding passes. After preparing these bombs, the plan was ready for execution by June 21 or 22, 1985. However, the bomb to be kept in the flight from Tokyo to Delhi via Bangkok exploded at the Narita airport on the conveyor belt. The second suitcase that was loaded on the Toronto-Delhi ai flight exploded in the air.”

Sarabjit said the PHRO’s probe has shown that Parmar was killed to hide the name of Lakhbir, who was an Indian agent. “After the Khalistan movement gained in sympathy in the West, especially in Canada, after the 1984 Blue Star operation and the killing of Sikhs in Delhi, a plot was hatched to discredit the Sikh movement. Parmar was roped in by Lakhbir at the behest of his masters. The Punjab Police got orders to finish off Parmar as he knew too much about the main perpetrators. On the day of the Kanishka blast, an explosion took place at Japan’s Narita airport, where two Japanese baggage handlers were killed. The plot was to trigger blasts when the two aircraft had de-embarked their passengers but the 1 hour 40 minute delay in Kanishka’s takeoff led to the bomb exploding mid-air,” Sarbjit said.

What gives credence to Sarabjit’s charge is the Source Report (in Tehelka’s posession) prepared by the Jalandhar Police soon after Parmar was killed. Based on information provided by Parmar — though not attributing it to his interrogation — the report makes no reference to Lakhbir. Interestingly, Lakhbir, accused in many acts of terrorist violence, is wanted by the Indian Government in only a minor case registered in Moga, Punjab. The Red Corner Interpol notice, A-23/1-1997, put out by the CBI against Lakhbir states: “OFFENCES: House breaking, theft, damage by fire.”

The PHRO told Canadian authorties that conclusive evidence existed of Parmar being killed in police custody and not in the “encounter” shown in FIR No 105 registered at Phillaur police station on October 15, 1992. The PHRO report, AI Flight 182 Case, states “On October 14, 1992, a high-level decision was conveyed to the police that Parmar had to be killed…The contradiction in the FIR and post-mortem report (PMR) is too obvious. As per the FIR, Parmar was killed by AK-47 fire by SSP Satish K Sharma from a rooftop. The PMR shows the line of fire of the three bullets is different. It cannot be if one person is firing from a fixed position. The PMR is very sketchy and no chemical analysis was done. Moreover, the time of death is between 12am and 2am according to the PMR, whereas the FIR records the time of death at 5.30am.”

Then Jalandhar SSP and now IGP, Satish K Sharma, denied the charge. “It was a clean encounter. The RCMP is bringing this up because they botched their investigations and failed to get convictions,” he said.

Firstly let me apologize to those of you who I left hanging for the last little without any updates. Fortnuatlly I was busy for the better part of the month and then lazy for the other half. None the less when I saw this story I thought that maybe its time to take a break from taking a break and get back into the mix of things.

Most of you have probably heard about the ban on Singh and Kaur that has been going on by the Canadian Immigration offices in Delhi. All though the practice has been going on for 10 years now, most of us had been oblivious to it until it made headlines recently. Anyway’s the government has since issued an apology and something along the lines of stating a change in policy.

Without getting to much into that though, I was kind of surprised to be reading the following from the CBC today:

Sikh name-change letter challenged on Facebook

Last Updated: Monday, July 30, 2007 | 7:20 AM ET

CBC News

Sikh groups angry about a controversial government letter requesting name changes for Sikh immigrants have taken their fight to the popular social networking website Facebook.

At least five online groups dedicated to discussing the government letter, which asked people with the common Sikh surnames Singh and Kaur to change their last names before coming to Canada, have been created.

Kupreet Singh, an administrator for one of the groups protesting the letter, said his forum has already attracted more than 400 members.

He said the online members are proof that Canadians are dissatisfied with Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley’s response last week. A spokesman from her department told CBC News a letter from the Canadian High Commission stating “the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada” was not government policy and was “poorly worded.”

Finley added that the letter did not demand that people named Singh or Kaur change their names, but was actually a request for them to add a surname in order to help the department be more efficient.

Singh said the members of his Facebook group are demanding more clarification on the issue.

“We would like [Minister Finley] to instruct her New Delhi office that not only should they not require people to change their names,” he said, “but not even request [a name change].”

Immigrants fear delays in applications

Immigrants are in a vulnerable position, Singh said. They fear that if they do not comply with a government request, their immigration applications may be delayed or even ignored.

Asking people to change their names simply to ease up some bureaucratic filing is unreasonable, he said.

The name-change controversy erupted after Tarvinder Kaur, waiting for her husband Jaspal Singh to arrive in Canada, learned his application to become a permanent resident had been delayed for more than a month because of his last name.

When CBC News first asked about the letter, immigration officials said the policy to ask for a third name was put in place 10 years ago.

More then anything, I was surprised by the fact that the CBC actually noticed the Facebook group and used it as the base of the Sikh voice. Not that this is a bad thing, just an interesting trend that I’ve seen emerging amongst the media, where they’ve now started to scour Facebook and other social networking sites to gauge the reaction of the public. The Toronto Star has written a few stories based souly from accounts taken from Facebook including the more recent Turban ban @ Marlowe story. Whether this trend will continue or not is still to be seen, however it does offer an interesting alternative to all those petitions that are often prepared that rarely get anyone’s attention.

It took a minute, but I finally found the CBC Documentary from a few years back on the Indo Canadian Gang problem. I remember when the CBC first aired this special, it was the talk of the town, with some pissed that the CBC worked so hard to showcase the dark side of the community while others took it as a wake up call.

I think the thing people need to remember is most of this violence is largely drug related, not saying that it makes it right, but once you get into the drug game getting killed is just part of the game, so if you don’t want to get killed just don’t do drugs.

Although Toronto’s drug scene isn’t near as notable as that of the west coasts, it’s only a matter of time before we catch the media’s attention here, especially seeing as how Brampton has been dubbed the central hub for majority of drug imports/exports on this side of Canada.  It’s not a proven fact, but it is the word on the block, with most of the jails filled with Punjabis caught trying to smuggle in drugs from the South) but the majority of the crimes seems to be the trafficking and smuggling of the packgaes rather then the local distribution of it (where most gang  land violence seems to stem from).

Then again without any solid figures and stats, the above amounts to being nothing more then speculation and hearsay, but then again all those Hummers rollingg around Brampton may speak a different story.