New York, US (November 15, 2013): Commemorating the upcoming Gurupurb of Sri Guru Nanank Dev Ji, the Sikh human rights groups are commencing the global signature campaign in support of Sikh Genocide Petition pending before United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). On November 17, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) will hold 1984 Sikh Genocide Petition Signature Camps in Gurudwaras throughout the world.
To support UN “1984 Sikh Genocide” complaint, SFJ to hold global signature campaign on Nov 17
November 17 Global Sikh Genocide Petition Signature Campaign will be the first such campaign being contemporaneously initiated in fifteen countries around the globe. Rights groups are targeting to collect over hundred thousand signatures during this one day campaign. AISSF has already collected more than one million signatures in support of 1984 Sikh Genocide Petition from India.
On November 01, a complaint was filed with United Nations pursuant to resolution 5/1 urging the United Nations to investigate the systematic, intentional and deliberate killing of Sikhs carried out across India during the first week of November 1984 and to recognize these attacks as “Genocide”. The complaint was filed by Sikh groups including ‘Sikhs For Justice” (SFJ), All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF), Movement Against Atrocities & Repression (MAR) and Gurudwara representatives across Europe and North America. More than 10,000 Sikhs from twenty seven countries also converged in front of United Nations, Geneva in support of the 1984 Sikh Genocide petition.
Sikh human rights groups have developed consensus that the recent discoveries of massing killing of Sikhs in more than 100 cities throughout India proves that November 1984 is Genocide as defined in Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide. The gravity, scale, organized and intentional nature of these genocidal attacks was concealed by the Indian governments by portraying them as “Anti-Sikh Riots of Delhi”. The recently discovered evidence shows that more than 37000 claims for deaths and injuries were filed by the victims of November 1984, out of which more than 20,000 claims were by victims who were attacked outside Delhi.
The Sikh Genocide Complaint is likely to come up before the UN’s “Working Group on Communications” by August 2014. Till then, Sikh groups will continue to collect signatures in support of Sikh Genocide Petition and will submit them to UNHCR.
According to attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor to SFJ, “twenty nine years of denial of justice and impunity to those who orchestrated genocidal attacks on Sikhs led the victims to file a complaint before United Nations”. “Since the Sikh community has exhausted all judicial remedies in India, the Human Rights Council is likely to take up the complaint and hold hearing to allow victims to present evidence related to Sikh Genocide”, added attorney Pannun.
With a target to collect more than hundred thousand signatures in a single day, Sikh groups are initiating the Global Genocide Petition Signature Campaign simultaneously on November 17 in the United States, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Spain, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.