US Sikh activist, target of assassination plot, says India still trying to kill him : NPR

It’s a cellphone name Gurpatwant Singh Pannun remembers effectively. It was June 17, 2023. After enjoying cellphone tag for a day, he and his shut aide in Canada lastly managed to attach.

“He advised me that he was knowledgeable by the Canadian intelligence officers that there’s a severe menace to his life and he may be killed,” Pannun recalled.

On that decision, his aide, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stated that assassins have been coming for Pannun as effectively. The dialog is seared into Pannun’s reminiscence due to what Nijjar advised him — but additionally as a result of it was the final time the 2 males spoke.

The next day, gunmen shot Nijjar lifeless within the car parking zone of a Sikh temple exterior Vancouver, Canada. Canadian authorities have arrested 4 Indian nationals in reference to the homicide.

Nijjar’s warning for Pannun, a twin U.S.-Canadian citizen, additionally proved prescient. 5 months later, the U.S. Justice Division introduced it had foiled a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York Metropolis. An Indian nationwide was charged within the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, and has pleaded not responsible.

Nijjar’s killing and the purported plan to assassinate Pannun are a part of a broader pattern around the globe by which international governments search to silence critics abroad, together with in the USA.

Final week, prosecutors introduced expenses towards a brand new defendant in Pannun’s case: a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, who allegedly orchestrated the plot.

In the previous couple of years, the Justice Division says it has foiled no less than 4 assassination plots tied to a international energy. Three of these allegedly hyperlink again to Iran, together with one concentrating on Iranian-American activist and journalist Masih Alinejad. The fourth — allegedly concentrating on Pannun — includes India.

The Indian authorities denies any involvement in Nijjar’s killing or the purported plot towards Pannun.

After the U.S. introduced expenses within the Pannun case, India arrange its personal inside inquiry to analyze. Simply over every week in the past, Indian officers have been in Washington for conferences to debate the case and for each side to offer an replace on their respective investigations.

The State Division known as the conferences “productive.” The Indian Embassy didn’t reply to a request for remark.

“Properly-documented” threats from India

Pannun, who was born in India however moved to the U.S. in 1992, advised NPR earlier this yr that the menace to his life got here as no shock.

“I’ve been threatened immediately by the Indian parliamentarians whereas sitting within the Indian parliament,” he stated. “They’ve said that we’re going to kill Pannun, even when we now have to do a surgical strike. These are well-documented, the statements of the federal government officers.”

Particularly, he factors to remarks Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a number of instances lately, together with early this July in India’s parliament.

“In the present day, publish 2014, India enters your private home and kills you,” Modi stated earlier than lawmakers. “Carries out surgical strikes. Carries out air strikes.”

In Pannun’s view, Modi’s menace about how India offers with its perceived enemies is directed at folks like him.

Pannun is a Sikh separatist. He’s a number one determine within the Khalistan motion, which needs to create an impartial Sikh homeland carved out from northern India. He and his group, Sikhs for Justice, have been spearheading a worldwide referendum for independence.

Khalistan referendum marketing campaign

Pannun is a training lawyer. At his legislation workplace in Queens, bins of case recordsdata and authorized books lined the partitions. His authorized work pays the payments, however a lot of his time he dedicates to the Khalistan trigger.

In his workplace, he has a inexperienced display screen arrange and digital camera for the movies he produces and posts on-line for the marketing campaign.

Behind his desk hung a yellow and blue Khalistan flag. On the wall was a framed image of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, the holiest web site in Sikhism.

Pannun and Nijjar first labored collectively to doc the occasions surrounding the Indian army’s assault on the temple in 1984, referred to as Operation Blue Star, and the federal government’s bloody, practically decade-long effort to stamp out an armed Sikh insurgency combating for independence. 1000’s have been killed.

The 2 males then shifted their focus to the longer term and began the Khalistan referendum marketing campaign. The concept is to have Sikhs around the globe vote on the query of making an impartial Sikh state. It’s an unofficial referendum, and never legally binding.

Pannun has devoted his life to the marketing campaign. He advised his household years in the past that his advocacy work would put him at odds with India’s authorities.

“I’ve advised them very clearly what it could entail and the place it might probably lead,” he stated. “That’s why after we are speaking about assassination makes an attempt and killings and threats, that doesn’t come as a shock to us. That doesn’t come as a shock to the household.”

“Survive to the end line”

The Modi authorities in 2020 designated Pannun and Nijjar terrorists for his or her separatist work.

Pannun rejects the allegation. He stated he follows the legislation, and that his marketing campaign is a peaceable, democratic course of.

India’s response, he stated, has been to come back after him, and that has pressured him to look over his shoulder.

“That’s how I’m going to outlive to the end line,” he stated.

The alleged assassination plot was not a one-off. He stated there are lively threats towards his life proper now. That hazard has not pressured him to finish his separatist work, but it surely has pressured him to take precautions.

At his workplace, a safety crew screens guests with a metallic detector. Physique guards ferry him to and from work. He had safety earlier than the alleged plot, he stated, however he’s beefed it up because the case was charged final yr.

“In the present day, what you see may be very, very apparent,” he stated of his safety element. “This can be a message that I’m giving that I’m not on the market to do it in suicide mode. I’m going to proceed to marketing campaign and I’m going to proceed to guard myself.”

Nonetheless, the menace on his life has altered, to a level, how he operates. The interview with NPR was in his workplace, partly, as a result of it’s safe.

“I can not simply abruptly take a automobile and bounce within the automobile and go anyplace,” he stated. “That’s what I’ve been suggested by my safety particulars. That’s the place you get killed.”

He’s modified his residence a number of instances because the alleged plot was foiled. He doesn’t go to eating places a lot. He stated he hasn’t been to the grocery retailer in years; he will get issues delivered as an alternative. And he is curtailed his on-the-ground marketing campaign appearances.

Boycotting Indian-owned companies

He stays very lively on-line, although, and usually posts movies on Instagram. A few of them present pro-Khalistan rallies, whereas others provide heated challenges towards India or Indian officers.

In a single from final November, Pannun declares: “Sikhs are going through existential menace below the successive India regimes.”

“We’re going to goal India,” he provides. “From Air India to made in India, we’re going to floor the whole lot.”

Some Indian media retailers interpreted that as a menace in gentle of the 1985 bombing of an Air India passenger jet flying from Canada to India that killed greater than 300 folks. A Canadian Sikh was discovered responsible in 2003 for involvement within the bombing. A Canadian court docket acquitted two others.

Pannun pushed again, calling that interpretation of his video an “Indian narrative,” and saying he was calling for a Sikh boycott of Indian-owned companies.

“The target behind it’s that I need the (Sikh) neighborhood to cease funding their very own genocide,” he stated. “I need the neighborhood to not spend a dime on Indian-owned companies.”

Breaking apart the Indian state

He’s additionally come below criticism over posters with the phrases “Kill India” and the names and photographs of Indian officers that the placards declare have been concerned in Nijjar’s killing. One of many officers pictured was Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s excessive commissioner, who was among the many six Indian diplomats just lately expelled from Canada.

Pannun stated his purpose is to interrupt up the Indian state.

“I say to kill Modi politics. We’re in America. We are saying ‘kill Biden politics,’ we are saying ‘kill Trump politics,’” Pannun stated. “’Kill India’ means balkanize India. India is just not a human being. India is in a union of states. We wish to balkanize India.”

A few of his posts on social media are about his late colleague and pal, Nijjar. His assassination, Pannun stated, has left a gap.

“You’re feeling the vacuum, however you then additionally get the power and the braveness: what Nijjar stood for, for what he gave his life, for what he has spent the final 15, 16 years with us,” he stated.

However Pannun additionally stated there’s no time to take a seat again and grieve. There may be work to be completed, a marketing campaign to run, regardless of the dangers.

“I’d reasonably take a bullet in my head than cease the Khalistan referendum marketing campaign,” he stated.