Canada: Parliament remembers Nijjar, Court Upholds No-Fly List

On 18 Jun, the Canadian Parliament observed a minute of silence to commemorate Hardeep Singh Nijjar's one-year death anniversary. In June 2023, Nijjar was shot and killed outside a Gurdwara in Surrey. As of now, Canadian police have arrested four alleged killers (SDW Vol 2 Issue 20, Story 2). India immediately reminded Canada of the Air India Kanishka Flight 182 bombing before it landed at London’s Heathrow Airport on 23 Jun 1985, killing all 329 people on board. India’s invocation of this tragedy again casts a close to four-decade aspersion that pro-Khalistan groups caused the bombing, and insinuates that Nijjar’s pro-Khalistan activism ought to have disqualified him from being honored as a Canadian citizen. Despite the Canadian govt. spending CAD130M on investigation and prosecution over almost twenty years, much remains hidden in govt. and intelligence files in Canada, India, and perhaps other countries. The need is to come clean on the tragedy. The aspersion becomes dire when all Sikhs are seen as Khalistanis, and all Khalistanis are deemed terrorists. Though Sikhs are in solidarity with the Kanishka bombing victims, at the ceremony marking the 39^th anniversary in Canada, the victim families turned away pro-Khalistan groups from the event. Meanwhile, on 21 Jun, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision to put Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Singh Dulai on the country’s no-fly list, after they weren’t allowed to get on planes in Vancouver in 2018. At Canada’s Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland press conference, a journalist asked her, ‘When Nijjar was alive, he was on the no-fly list and his mortgages were frozen. But now, after his death, why did the Parliament observe a moment of silence for Nijjar?’ She answered, ‘Because the Canadian PM wanted to convey that in the eyes of the Canadian government, all citizens are equal and murder on Canadian soil is just not allowed.’