Hoshiarpur: Dal Khalsa, a Sikh activists group, today said in a written press release that it’s overseas delegation met United Nation official in Geneva to engage the world body on contentious issues concerning the future of Punjab and its people.
“The delegation apprised the UN that ever since the Modi government came into power in 2014, space for dissent and freedom of expression has shrunk and hate-mongering and war-mongering is the order of the day” reads the statement.
Party spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh who informed the media here about the meeting between Christine Chung, Human Rights Officer looking after Asia Pacific Section and their group representative at Geneva yesterday, said the objective of the meeting was to share our history and heritage with the United Nations to provide a thorough understanding of the perspective in which we make our present demands before it.
The memorandum submitted by Dal Khalsa UK and Swiss chapter heads Manmohan Singh Khalsa and Prithpal Singh blamed the Indian state for trampling of rights, tainting Sikhs, meddling in the religious affairs, legally and illegally looting our natural resources including water and crushing dissent through detentions and police fear.
In an opening para the hardliner Sikh body took a dig at UN bodies for doing very little in India and almost negligible in Punjab. “It will not be wrong to say that we are the backwaters of the world – a no man’s land where the international community is afraid to put its feet on”, reads the memo.
Dal Khalsa delegates at the UN Headquarters
Anticipating that Supreme Court judgement on March 28 will be against the riparian rights of the people of Punjab, the Dal Khalsa memo explains in detail the background of how through its biased attitude and actions the government of India has systematically looted the waters resources and how the ghost of the SYL canal has cropped up again to haunt the people of Punjab.
Another serious issue that was discussed relates to Punjab sitting on an epidemic of drug abuse, with a clear complicity of the politician & police as drugs and substance are easily available. Dal Khalsa is of firm belief that because it affects Sikhs and Punjabi’s, the GoI was not taking concrete measures to curb the menace.
Referring to the decision of the newly formed Punjab government under Captain Amarinder Singh, about the setting up of ‘Commission of Inquiry’ to look into police excesses over the last 10 years, the delegation told UN official that this vindicate theirs stand that successive governments have been victimising political opponents and dissenters who disagree with them and who hold diametrically opposite political opinion and belief.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the UN resolution adopted by the HRC on 27 March, 2014 on rights abuses and war crimes in Sri Lanka, at least for once, the UN acted in South Asia. Seeking UN intervention, they asked UN officials to put the spotlight on India, irrespective of the size of the global market size of this vast country.