London: Last Friday The Times carried an exclusive article titled: ‘Files on Sikh massacre are withdrawn ‘to hide SAS role’ and the Daily Mail an article titled ‘Did the SAS kill at Amritsar? Foreign Office hastily recalls files ‘detailing UK role’ in notorious Indian army crackdown on Sikhs’.
Later the same day the Labour Party issued an official statement calling for a ‘full independent investigation’. The Labour Party said the Sikh community deserved to know the truth of British involvement following ‘new evidence’ produced by the Sikh Federation (UK).
While Theresa May has been in India for the last 3 days on a less than productive trade visit according to most commentators, the private offices of the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary have each been flooded with around 3,000 individual emails from an online petition launched by the Sikh Federation (UK) titled: ‘Independent investigation into UK government assistance during the 1984 Sikh Genocide’.
According to Gurjeet Singh, Press Secretary of the Sikh Federation (UK), the UK based Sikh group is preparing to increase political pressure by getting constituents to write to individual MPs to encourage Theresa May to intervene and release vital information to demonstrate greater transparency to Parliament, the British public and the worldwide Sikh community.
A Sikh Federation (UK) spokesman said “We have shown before that we have considerable lobbying power and hope over 100 MPs from across the political spectrum and across the UK will write to the Prime Minister in the next 10 days and are confident we can double the reach to MPs by the end of the month. MPs will be asked to urge her to come clean and take positive action to restore confidence of the Sikh community in the present government and to be transparent about the shortcomings of the past.”
“The Home Secretary also needs to urgently respond to our lawyers, KRW Law and share with us her views in resect of the possibility of a further investigation as she has been put on notice. We have a number of other actions and associated publicity planned and will seek a public inquiry if the Home Secretary is not in a position to commission an independent investigation, which addresses our concerns”, he added.