Click on above video to watch demonstration
Toronto, Canada (KP)--As reported previously by PW (India's Tri-color trampled at Toronto Protest), activists of various Sikh organizations along with members of the 'United Front against Human Rights Violations in India' organized a protest rally outside Toronto's Pearson Convention Center, where celebrations for India’s ‘Republic Day’ were in progress.
The protesters had gathered outside the convention center carrying banners such as “Stop Burning Churches & Killing Christians, Sikhs and Muslims in India” and played Sikh Dhadhi Vaars (martial-religious hymns) that were so popular in Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s.
| "The Indian flag represents a symbol of brutal oppression and injustice ...it also bears the weight and burden of thousands of tortures, murders, rapes and massacres..." |
The demonstrators threw half a dozen Indian flags on the parking lot ground entrances, and openly trampled them, a crime in India, and watched the incoming attendees drive their mud-slicked vehicles over the very ‘taranga’ (tri-color) the Indians seem to be so proud of.
According to Indian media, India’s Consul General in Toronto, Preeti Saran, has lodged a complaint with the Canadian government about the ‘desecration’ of their national flag by the protestors. The Sikh representatives wondered whether the Consul General has forgotten that Canada is a free country, and that Canadian law fully permits them to do whatsoever with the national flag of India.
The Sikh representatives stated that the Indian government was responsible for the calculated genocide of tens of thousands of members of the Sikh, Muslim and Christian communities in the past few decades and that they were not about to forget these atrocities by this so-called democratic republic.
Interestingly, the Indian media reported that visitors to the function were being “forced” to drive over their national flag, but according to the protest organizers no one was forced to do anything, since the entire demonstration was conducted in the presence of the Peel Police and local authorities.
“It was their choice to driver their vehicles over their Indian flag, if they love it that much they could have refused to do so and reached the convention center in another manner, it was their choice,” retorted a Sikh protestor who attended the demonstration. “Perhaps they should have gotten out of their cars and picked their muddied national flag up, or driven around it. Why are they complaining now?” he continued.
To the protestors, the Indian flag represents a symbol of brutal oppression and injustice that their communities have had to put up with for the last three decades. It also bears the weight and burden of thousands of tortures, murders, rapes and massacres that have been committed under this very symbol.
Images of the demonstration:
