Harper & Ignatieff
Toronto, Canada: It has been a while since the Network and a thousand other Sikhs traveled to Ottawa with the hopes of witnessing the reading of a historical petition identifying November 1984 as a Genocide, following which much has happened.
The Sikh community yet again, has been cheated, manipulated and denied their basic human rights. Let’s start from the beginning.
On June 9th, Sikhs gathered and traveled hundreds of kilometers to witness the power of Canadian democracy. Headed by Sikhs for Justice, the House of Commons was preparing for the reading of a petition that identified November 1984 as a Genocide with a large emphasis on the word genocide, for two main reasons. First, because that is precisely what it was and secondly because identifying it as such could lead to the UN investigating India’s systematic and planned murder of Sikhs in Delhi.
The plan was, as we the Sikh community arrived, to funnel into the house and witness this historic moment. Little did we know, we were in for a surprise.
This is where it gets messy. Although much of what is written below is based on our experience and perception, portions discussing what took place behind closed doors are an alleged account of what took place. Truthfully we have no way of confirming the backroom deals, however the consequences of whatever took place were and have been very real.
On June 9th, moments before the petition was to be read, MP Sukh Dhaliwal and Andrew Kania came out onto the front lawn of Parliament where many Sikhs awaited the reading of the petition. Sukh Dhaliwal announced that the balcony inside the House of Commons was jam-packed with Sikhs and as space freed up he would send his assistants out to get us. During his many visits outside, Sukh Dhaliwal was perhaps the only MP that took the time to meet and address Sikh youth, reminding us that we are the future of the Sikh Nation and fundamental to the future of the Canadian Nation as well; truthfully he was quite encouraging and true to his word.
After waiting some time, Sukh Dhaliwal sent his assistants to gather Sikhs to witness the historic moment. We were amongst the first group to be taken in, most likely due to our youth representation. So, as we were called in, we first ushered in all the women, then the youngest, followed by the rest of us. As we made our way to the balcony, the journey was an interesting one. One such instance included a run-in with Ruby Dhalla, who exposed her own immaturity amongst many other things, but we’ll leave that story for another day.
We seated ourselves and waited, and waited. Finally, we realized the petition wasn’t being read and we were signaled to get up and leave, at once the entire balcony got up and began to head out.
What happened? Well, here are the alleged back room deals that were made:
- It is believed that the Liberal leadership and Conservative Party made a back room deal to stop the petition from being read after being pressured and coerced by threats from the Indian consulate.
- The alleged agreement was that the Conservative Party would put forth a vote to skip the period during which the petition would be read, and the Liberal party would ensure a large enough portion of their party would not be present so that the Liberal, Bloc and NDP could not form a majority.
- During this period, the Liberals in fact had a large portion of the caucus missing. Each party has a designated whip, whose job it is to immediately have every member of a party caucus to return for any urgent vote. The whip never performed his/her job on this day.
- When the vote was put to the table the Liberal, NDP and Bloc lost to the Conservatives after being unable to form a majority due to the absence of Liberal Party MPs.
- After the Petition portion was skipped, the Liberals exploited the situation, rushed onto the front lawn of Parliament and accused the Conservatives of playing a dirty game.
- At this point, the Conservatives, including MP Tim Uppal realized that they had been exploited by the Liberal party as well and were now the subject of harsh criticism from the Sikh community.
- At approximately 7pm the Conservatives attempted to reintroduce the petition, but the NDP or Block (conflicting reports on this point) prevented this from happening to ensure the Conservatives felt the wrath of the Sikh community.
Fortunately, even after a saga of trickery on behalf of the Liberal and Conservative parties, the petition was not suppressed. The following day on June 10th, Liberal MP’s Andrew Kania and Sukh Dhaliwal prepared themselves for their second attempt. Allegedly, they were again subjected to attempted acts of censorship from their own party, after all Liberal Members of Parliament were instructed NOT to use the word genocide.
Andrew Kania consequently stood in Parliament, highlighted what took place in 1984, yet fell victim to the censorship of his own party. Fortunately, he was followed by Sukh Dhaliwal who let the wheels of democracy take course and represented his constituents and read the statement in full.
Source: http://sikhactivist.net/?p=684
