Amritsar: Low turnout marked the unofficial Khalistan referendum at a gurdwara in the Canadian town of Surrey, forcing the event organiser to call for a revote on October 29.
In a two-minute-30-second video posted on Monday, outlawed Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) legal counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun made a hate speech against Indian leaders and claimed that “lakhs of Sikhs participated in the referendum”. The clip comes in the backdrop of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement at the G20 Summit in Delhi that “actions of a few do not represent the entire community or Canada”.
A vast majority of local Sikhs in Surrey dubbed the referendum a “sham exercise that doesn’t reflect the community’s sentiments”. Jaspal Singh Atwal of Surrey claimed: “The referendum was an abject failure, a listless exercise. Being dedicated to Canadian history’s worst mass murderer — Talwinder Singh Parmar, mastermind of the Kanishka bombing of Toronto-Delhi Air India Flight 182 in 1985 that killed 329 people — and to another terrorist, Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was killed outside the venue gurdwara in the recent past, the event failed to engage the local Sikh population.”
Atwal has claimed it to be a humiliating exercise for the SFJ even though it had invited pro-Khalistanis from the US, the UK, and Canada, and paid homeless people and students to bolster the numbers.
He said: “The failure of this fake referendum forces the SFJ to plan a face-saver on October 29.”
In a two-minute-30-second video posted on Monday, outlawed Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) legal counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun made a hate speech against Indian leaders and claimed that “lakhs of Sikhs participated in the referendum”. The clip comes in the backdrop of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement at the G20 Summit in Delhi that “actions of a few do not represent the entire community or Canada”.
A vast majority of local Sikhs in Surrey dubbed the referendum a “sham exercise that doesn’t reflect the community’s sentiments”. Jaspal Singh Atwal of Surrey claimed: “The referendum was an abject failure, a listless exercise. Being dedicated to Canadian history’s worst mass murderer — Talwinder Singh Parmar, mastermind of the Kanishka bombing of Toronto-Delhi Air India Flight 182 in 1985 that killed 329 people — and to another terrorist, Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was killed outside the venue gurdwara in the recent past, the event failed to engage the local Sikh population.”
Atwal has claimed it to be a humiliating exercise for the SFJ even though it had invited pro-Khalistanis from the US, the UK, and Canada, and paid homeless people and students to bolster the numbers.
He said: “The failure of this fake referendum forces the SFJ to plan a face-saver on October 29.”