Tens of thousands of Sikh Canadians celebrated the Sikh New Year in Toronto on Sunday, amid worries a fresh outbreak of violence within the community could mar celebrations.
Toronto police were on hand to control crowds and monitor traffic at the city’s annual Khalsa Day parade, which commemorates the founding of the Khalsa order of Sikhism. The march was expected to draw up to 80,000 people and include religious speeches in the heart of downtown Toronto.
“We are not anticipating any problems, but we will be prepared to deal with anything,” Staff Sergeant Peter Troup said.
Last week, a fight broke out between two Sikh factions inside a temple in Brampton, northwest of Toronto, sending four people to the hospital.
Militants inside the temple brandished hammers, machetes and construction knives, while hundreds of people screamed and shoved each other around. Five people have been charged with assault, police said.
The brawl was reportedly over a power struggle to control the temple, amid allegations of mismanaging funds.
At another Sikh center in Brampton, well-known Sikh lawyer Manjit Mangat was stabbed with a kirpan dagger early this month. Mangat survived the attack.
Federal police, meanwhile, are investigating an online posting calling for the murder of Canada’s top Sikh politician, Liberal Minister of Parliament Ujjal Dosanjh, after he warned of rising Sikh extremism in this country.
“Someone shoot him ASAP,” read a comment posted on the Facebook site titled “Ujjal Dosanjh is a Sikh Traitor,” the National Post newspaper reported.
Another posting branded Dosanjh, a former premier of British Columbia and federal justice minister from 2004 to 2006, as a “rat in our midst,” a “scumbag traitor and an insult to the Sikh religion.”
Dosanjh, who was savagely beaten in 1985 after speaking out against religious violence, warned in a recent interview that Sikh extremism in Canada — blamed for the 1985 Air India bombing that killed all 329 people aboard — was “getting worse.”
“It’s more entrenched, it’s more sophisticated and sometimes it’s double-faced,” he said.
His comments echoed concerns expressed by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper over growing support by Canadian Sikhs for militants in Punjab.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) sought to downplay perceptions of growing extremism among Sikhs in Canada.
“Some recent threats against Ujjal Dosanjh have been made by unknown persons claiming to be Sikh,” it said in a statement. “These have been used to support the indictment that extremism is rampant and on the rise in the Canadian Sikh community. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS