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New York’s 21st Vaisakhi Sikh Day Parade successfully held on April 26 Invitee Akal Takht Jathedar, Joginder Singh Vedanti, boldly endorsed the right of self-determination of Sikhs for a democratic buffer state of Khalistan in South Asia, at the NY parade
American Sikhs support the defiant stand of Canadian Sikhs on the issue of display of photographs of Sikh martyrs of Khalistan on parades
Sikh diaspora to launch a worldwide campaign to convince Canada to boycott the 71 nation 2010 Commonwealth Games being held in Delhi in which city over 10, 000 Sikhs were murdered in a state-sponsored pogrom, in November 1984;and to-date nobody has been found guilty
Washington D.C. Wednesday April 30, 2008: On a bright and sunny Saturday, on April 26, 2008, downtown New Yorkers saw the colorful 21st Vaisakhi Sikh Day Parade, marching down Broadway, in Manhatten, which culminated in the Madison Avenue Park, where distinguished invitee Akal Takht Jathedar, Joginder Singh Vedanti, in his speech to the enthusiastic crowd, endorsed the Sikh right of self-determination to seek a democratic water/food-rich buffer state of Khalistan in South Asia. A Sikh state destined to act as a bridge of peace and commerce between South and Central Asia.
The patriotic call of Jathedar Vedanti was endorsed with repeated loud cheers of ‘Long Live Khalistan’ (Khalistan Zindabad) by the over 30, 0000 Sikhs who had gathered in the Madison Avenue Park, New York. Sikh-American men, women and children dressed in colorful Punjabi clothes, living in the East Coast Tri State area, participated enthusiastically in the above mentioned New York parade. A number of beautiful floats, also joined the parade depicting Sikh religion, history, culture and memorabilia honoring Sikh martyrs who have laid down their lives fighting for freedom against the Indian occupation of the Sikh Homeland a la American martyrs like Nathan Hale, whose dying words, (minutes before he was hanged by the British on September 22, 1776), “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” gained him immortality. Or like the thousands of Americans prisoners who were tortured to death (martyred) in the British prison ship HMS Jersey during the revolutionary war or like Crispus Attucks, (a mulatto with African and Native American ancestry) who is remembered, in the United States, as the first martyr of the American Revolution, who was murdered by British soldiers, in the infamous Boston Massacre, on March 5, 1770. Other highlights of the New York parade included demonstrations of Sikh Gatka and free food stalls serving Sikh ‘langar’.
The New York parade, also marked the 300th anniversary of the installation of Guru Granth Sahib, as eternal Guru by the tenth Guru Sri Gobind Singh Ji, in 1708. This New York parade was organized, as it has been organized for over two decades, by the New York Richmond Hill Sikh Cultural Society and was supported by over fifty East Coast (tri-state) Gurdwaras and Sikh Organizations like Sikhs For Justice, United Sikhs, Dal Khalsa (USA) and Sikh Youth of America. The long list of distinguished guests included Akal Takht Jathedar Sirdar Joginder Singh Vedanti, Dr. Amarjit Singh of Khalistan Affairs Center, Washington D.C., Dr. Surjit Singh from Buffalo New York, and two Sikh-Canadian members of Canada’s Parliament, Dr. Ruby Dhalla (who represents Bramptom-Springdale) and Sirdar Gurbaksh Singh Malhi who represents Bramalea-Gore-Malton constituency in Canada.Member of Canadian Parliament Gurbaksh Singh Malhi, in his Madison Avenue Park speech, advised the meeting to involve American legislators (Law-makers) in functions like New York’s annual Sikh Day parade in future. Dr. Amarjit Singh in his speech mentioned the 193 national flags flying outside the United Nations building where the Khalistan flag, he said, will soon join the flag of newly independent Kosovo.
The Akal Takht Jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti spoke next. Last Saturday’s successful New York parade, held in true American tradition of goodwill, freedom and happiness, reminded the participants of the huge Vaisakhi parade (attended by over a hundred thousand determined Canadian Sikhs) held in Surrey, Canada, on April 12, 2008, under the shadow and strain of a widespread anti-Sikh disinformation and intimidation campaign. A media campaign mounted by some ignorant, ill-informed, and bigoted Canadian journalists (‘brain-washed’ probably by the bigotry of the likes of one, Ms. Kim Bolan, a known anti-Sikh ‘constipated journalist’) who has constantly tried to demonize the peaceful Sikh-Canadian community by distorting the truth in order to play on post 9/11 Canadian phobias. An example of her writing is a Surrey-datelined report, dated March 28, 2008, on the website of the Times Colonist, a Victoria B.C. based newspaper, headlined, “Mounties claim veto power over Sikh parade,” written by Kim Bolan, which claims that, “The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) plans to screen floats in an annual Sikh parade to ensure terrorism and political violence aren’t glorified,” as if Canada is Nazi Germany and the peaceful, prosperous and upright three quarter million-strong Sikh Canadian community will get intimidated and stop honoring their martyrs in their parades and Gurdwaras. To read Kim Bolan’s above mentioned trashy drivel please click at the following links:
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=3b370a6c-af5a-4182-9c1d-2947fa481f1e
or click at: http://www.pluralism.org/news/article.php?id=19414
About a year ago, this column, dated July 11, 2007, challenged the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute for providing a stage for a hate-filled tirade, by Kim Bolan, against 750,000 Sikh-Canadians in which she tried to call for their disenfranchisement. It was headlined, “Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center takes up the issue with the Vancouver-based Institute and suggests an apology - Ottawa-based World Sikh Organization sues CBC for its anti-Sikh documentary Samosa Politics.” The apology never came despite the fact that the Fraser Institute’s News Release, dated June 29, 2007, had become a party to the following insane suggestion from Kim Bolan to disenfranchise Canada’s Sikhs, which reads, “Change the nomination rules around who can vote. That little thing will reduce the extremists’ power and influence.”
The current vicious campaign to demonize the peaceful and happy Sikh-Canadian community, in that country’s media, was obviously fathered (read financed) by Indian diplomatic offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa and was started in right earnest following an unfortunate, stupid and vicious letter, addressed to the Amritsar-based Shiromani Gurdwara Prabanthik Committee (SGPC), President, Avtar Singh Makkar, in March 2008, by none other than ‘demoNcratic’ India’s weak, ‘Quizling’, Prime minister Manmohan Singh a ‘Rent-a-Sikh babu’ who having been defeated once in a general election has avoided general elections like the plague. Mr. Manmohan Singh claimed in his letter to the SGPC, which came out of thin air that, “The (Indian) government and our agencies have credible information of efforts being made by extremist groups to revive militancy in Punjab. Remnants of Sikh rebel groups abroad are helping attempts to revive an insurgency in India’s northern state of Punjab.”
Shame on Manmohan Singh! “He that is shameless is graceless,” wrote Thomas Fuller M.D. (1654-1734) the great English writer and compiler who probably wrote the line years ago with spineless people like Indian PM Manmohan Singh in mind. Till now, analysts/experts have been talking and writing only of the dangers of cyber-terrorism to states and civil societies. For the first time China, Khalistan’s North Eastern neighbor, has experienced the lethal force of orchestrated ‘Cyber Democracy’, when small bands of internet savvy Tibetans, covertly financed by Indian operatives, showed how the air waves and the world’s attention can be monopolized, with small colorful protests. There is a lesson in this for the three million strong free and prosperous Sikh diaspora. India can be made to regret it’s decision to hold the 2010 Commonwealth games in Delhi, where every street and lane witnessed the murder of over ten thousand innocent Sikh, men, women and children in a state-sponsored pogrom, in November 1984, ordered with a ‘wink and nod’ by none other than the then Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. It does not behoove Canada, a true democracy and a champion of Human Rights to participate in the 2010 Commonwealth Games being held in Delhi a city ‘painted red’ with the blood of ten thousand innocent Sikhs whose relatives, nearly a quarter century later, still cry for justice. Even the much trumpeted cash compensation for the survivors of the November 1984 state-sponsored pogrom has become a scam.
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