The leader of the NDP caught up by its links with the separatist sikhs

JOEL LEMAY/QMI AGENCY

AFP

Thursday, 15 march, 2018 18:44

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Thursday, 15 march, 2018 18:52

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The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, sikh religion, is undermined at the head of his party to have rubbed shoulders with the separatist sikhs advocating the creation of an independent State in India.

Before taking the leadership of the New democratic Party, Mr. Singh was one of the speakers invited to San Francisco in 2015 for a rally of activists of the independence of the indian region of Punjab (north), the land of sikhism, according to canadian media.

On the forum there was a poster bearing the effigy of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the leader of an extremist group armed, killed in a firefight with indian forces.

In his speech, translated from the punjabi for the Globe and Mail newspaper, Mr Singh accused India of having committed a “genocide” against the Sikhs in the assault of the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a sacred place, in 1984.

Mr. Singh, 39 years, has also participated in another event in 2016, to be organised by a british organisation, the national Federation of the youth to the sikh, activist for the creation of an independent State, according to the Globe and Mail and the daily National Post.

Mr. Singh said, condemning “all acts of terrorism in the world. Terrorism can never be considered as a way to advance the cause of one group or another. Terrorism only leads to suffering, pain and death,” he said in a press release.

In February, Mr. Singh had defended one of the four ministers belonging to the sikh religion who accompanied the prime minister Justin Trudeau during his trip in India, judged to be disastrous.

The minister had been caught in a photo with a Canadian fellow believer convicted of having attempted to assassinate a representative of india during a visit to Canada in 1986.

Nearly 500,000 Canadians are belonging to the sikh religion, or about 1.4% of the population, according to the census of 2016. But their electoral weight is, however, decisive in several districts that have given the victory to the liberals of Mr. Trudeau in 2015.

The elections of 2019, the liberals will have to deal with Mr. Singh, popular in the diaspora, and that weighs heavily on the vote in 25 constituencies on 338 in the federal parliament.