Canada-India row: Look, who’s casting the first stone

Politics is a killing field where no one is a saint and human rights are a sham. The accuser is no better than the accused. Every country has its share of blood on its hands. Such thoughts may spring to mind when considering the recent spat between India and Canada over the killing of a prominent Sikh figure, who was seen as an activist by Canada and a terrorist by India.

The debate over one’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter apart; the rift that erupted only weeks after the two countries’ leaders met at the New Delhi G20 summit only highlights the diaspora-vote-bank politics that prompts Western leaders to mollycoddle disruptive forces that seek to destabilise their countries of origin. These leaders, in spite of their ratification of myriad anti-terrorism conventions and public condemnation of terrorism, turn a blind eye to diaspora groups’ fundraising and propaganda campaigns aimed at adding more fuel to terrorism in their countries of origin.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation that India orchestrated the killing of Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canadian territory in June may not come as a surprise to many Sri Lankans. To appease and win the votes of Sri Lankan Canadians who have problems reconciling with Sri Lanka, the Canadian government often makes sweeping allegations that Sri Lanka committed genocide during the separatist war that ended in 2009.

Canada has failed to substantiate its allegations against Sri Lanka, but with regard to the killing of Nijjar, Canada says an investigation is underway. Canada is home to some 800,000 Sikhs—2.1 percent of Canada’s 40 million population.
But is Canada squeaky clean? Most Western leaders seem to take the moral high ground on human rights to cover their crimes. Their human rights defence with a narcissistic passion is just a front. It is a political tool.

Canada has a dark history of human rights abuses, both domestically and internationally. The discovery of the remains of over 750 indigenous children at former residential schools in 2021

is a stark reminder of the country’s legacy of racism. Rarely does it condemn Israel’s repressive policies. As a NATO member, Canada has also participated in bombing missions in several countries, including the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. Canada’s complicity in NATO crimes should not be overlooked, especially given its apparent crusade to cleanse the global politics of targeted killings and to promote accountability-focused democracy.
In air attacks carried out by NATO nations, including Canada, more than one hundred thousand civilians died in Iraq alone during the occupation of Iraq by NATO nations. More than one thousand civilians died in Libya in seven months of NATO air attacks, ten percent of which were carried out by Canadian fighter jets.

Then, in what could be easily termed war crimes or state terrorism, NATO aircraft destroyed Libya’s water supply system—a civilian facility—in April 2011, denying pipe-borne water to nearly 4 million Libyans living in the district of Sirte, surrounded by one of the hottest and driest deserts in the world. This facility was one of the social welfare miracles of the Libyan government under Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown and ruthlessly murdered by NATO-backed militias in October 2011.
No one can deny that under Gaddafi’s rule, Libya had one of the highest standards of living in Africa. But NATO got rid of Gaddafi by engineering an uprising in the east of the country. Why? Because he was leading a campaign to rescue African nations from the West’s neocolonial traps.

Today, Libya is suffering disaster after disaster. NATO nations, including Canada, should be held accountable for the deaths of some 20,000 Libyans who died in tsunami-like floods caused by the dam burst in the northeastern Libyan city of Derna this month. If not for the ongoing civil war between Libya’s rival governments, the authorities could have acted on engineers’ warnings and repaired the dam’s cracks. Since the civil war erupted as a result of the NATO-led intervention, NATO was also responsible for the dam disaster.
As Libya was being plunged into the civil war, Stephen Harper, Canada’s then Prime Minister, had the gumption to say: “There remain significant commercial opportunities in Libya for Canadian companies in the oil and gas, infrastructure, and education sectors.”

This is what Canada’s socialist writer Naomi Klein describes as disaster capitalism, whereby powerful nations impose war on targeted countries as a shock doctrine and then derive benefits through construction contracts and by plundering resources, especially oil and gas.
Yet Canada has no qualms about casting the first stone at countries like Sri Lanka and India.

Canada knew Nijjar was a promoter of Khalistan, a separate state for which Sikh militias fought in the 1970s and early 1980s until the then-Indian Prime Minister Indra Gandhi ruthlessly crushed the separatist rebellion by storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar in India’s Punjab province. Canada knows well that India has declared Najjar and other Khalistan activists terrorists. But most Western nations take little or no action against separatist activities on their soil, even though they know these activities destabilise other countries.

However, the burden is now on Canada to prove that its prime minister’s claim was not without evidence. 
It is increasingly becoming common for states to engage in targeted killings, especially after precedents set by big powers. During the Cold War, the CIA and its Soviet counterpart, the KGB, carried out assassinations of people they considered a threat to the interests of their respective countries. The CIA had planned more than 600 schemes to kill Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. 

Israel is another country known for targeted killings. It has killed several top Iranian scientists in Iran. It is believed that the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died due to nuclear poisoning that was stealthily administered to him by Israeli agents. Then there was Saudi Arabia’s Jamal Khashoggi killing. 
Russia is another country that has been accused of carrying out deadly poison attacks on dissidents. In Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017, North Korean agents assassinated a prominent dissident by persuading two women to smear him with deadly VX poison. In October last year, a Pakistani journalist was killed in Kenya in what has been suspected to be a targeted killing by state agents.

Sometimes, assassinations are carried out by a third country to tarnish the image of its rival.
India’s intelligence outfit, the Research and Analysis Wing, is not a saffron-clad holy Sadhu. It is not averse to the rule that if the need arises, assassination is not only an option but also a national duty.

However, the truth about the Nijjar killing is unlikely to come out. Both India and Canada are close US allies. Washington is sure to mediate behind the scenes, and soon Canada’s allegations and the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats by the two countries will be forgotten in the greater interest of the grand design the US has set in motion to check rising global power China. The US does not want to lose India, its frontline soldier, in the multi-pronged campaign against China.