MEDIA RELEASE: 35 Afghan Sikh Arrivals in UK Are Victims of Jihadi Persecution – Not Human Trafficking
The shocking discovery of 35 Sikhs in a container at Tilbury docks highlights the on-going persecution that religious and ethnic minorities are suffering within parts of the Islamic world. Given this incident and the recent threat to others in Iraq, Sikh activist and NLP National Council member Jagdeesh Singh reflects upon this persecution and the lack of self-determination for ‘stateless’ peoples, in a press release which we reproduce.
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SCAN |“Turning ideas into action”
SIKH COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK
PO Box 968, Slough, SL3 7YP, East Berkshire
“One who practices truth, righteous living, charity and good deeds,
has the supplies for God’s Path. Worldly success shall not fail that being.”
Panna 743, Guru Granth Sahib
MEDIA RELEASE : 18th August 2014
Contact: Jagdeesh Singh | 07827-321036
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35 AFGHAN SIKH ARRIVALS IN UK ARE VICTIMS OF JIHADI PERSECUTION
Calls for Direct British Government Intervention
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British Sikh campaigners say, the arrival of Sikh Afghan civilians at the UK’s Tilbury Docks in a container (east side of London); represents a potent example of continuing and chronic jihadi persecution of minority communities in Afghanistan.
British Sikh campaigners are urging British Prime Minister to match his rhetoric on fighting jihadism, by directly intervening on the case of these 35 Sikhs – one of whom has died in the process of the agonising struggle to get to the safety of the UK.
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“Sikhs, along-with Hindu and Buddhist, have been direct and whole-scale victims of the horrifying Taliban Jihad warfare on non-Muslim minorities and communities in Afghanistan.” Tens of thousands of Afghan Sikhs have fled to the UK and other parts of Europe, over the course of the last 15- years.
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Campaigners say there is a grave danger of the 35 Sikhs being treated purely as illegal immigrants linked to ‘human trafficking’, rather than as genuine victims of persecution. Jagdeesh Singh of SCAN says, “If the persecution is ignored, this will be damning injustice.”
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Jagdeesh Singh says, “Early media reports keep using the phrase ‘human trafficking’, but fail to contextualise and grasp the situation of Sikhs in Afghanistan.” He stresses, “It will be highly negligent and dubious, if the UK authorities fail to consider the overwhelming persecution and ethnic cleansing factor.”
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Over the last 15-years, with the gruesome onset of Taliban rule and an unsuppressable Talibanistic presence across much of Afghanistan; Sikh be-headings, kidnappings, destruction of Sikh homes and gurdwaras has become a routine experience.
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Despite officially opposing the Taliban menace, the official Afghan government has abjectly failed to protect mainstream Afghan civilians and long-settled communities like the Sikhs. Afghanistan is a social disorder and a failed state. The long-established Sikh population have now been ethnically cleansed wholescale from Afghanistan.
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Campaigners say, “These arrivals represent the last desperate remnants of an already heavily terrorised and fleeing Sikh population. They deserve the same support and protection as the Yazidi and Christians of Iraq.” British and US military and political policy in Afghanistan has completely failed to establish law and order, justice and human rights.
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The Sikh community have over centuries in their home country of Panjaab, been direct victims of Islamic jihadism. The Sikhs have risen as a community during the 15-18th century, as a frontline resistance to jihadi invasions and impositions across northern India and surrounding regions of South Asia.
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“We have had a vicious and genocidal experience of jhadism down the centuries. We can speak as first-hand victims of mass jihadism across our home country. We were the most resolute and determined opposition to jihadism under Mughal rule and from Afghanistan. We became famous for our robust and heroic fight against jihadism including defeat of Afghan-Pathaan fanatics, and our emergence as an independent people and state from such a gruelling liberation struggle. “ Says Jagdeesh Singh of SCAN. “We have a lot to teach and share with the world about jihadi persecution.”
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See:
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FURTHER INFORMATION
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1. British Sikh campaigners, stress that, “jihadism remains a poisonous modern fire which has resurged and shown its powerful spread across the Middle-East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and is beginning to make dangerous noises in India aswell. Jihadism poses a major threat to global affairs and is third force, alongside the unethical and greedy scheming and territorial carve ups which define western-imperialistic foreign policy. Communities like the Kurds, Sikhs, Tamils, Kashmiris, Baluchi, Sindi, Palestinian, are all direct victims of this global disarray caused by the wealing and dealing of British, French, Russian, US, Chinese, Indian, Saudi Arabia and other collaborating governments.
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2. British Sikh campaigners are due to hold a series of public dialogues on the present and future dangers posed by Jihadism – both globally and in the UK, coupled with the equally damaging messy foreign policy strategies of major governments including the British. “This horrifying mix of selfish gain, militarism, commercial greed and profit, has caused multiple wars, genocide, persecution, creation of artificial countries, division and ethnic cleansing of natural nations like the Kurds, Pathaans, Panjaabis, Bengalis, Palestinians, and more.” Says Jagdeesh Singh. “The world must unite against this enduring poisonous manipulation and collusion, as big governments carve up the world and its riches and devastate and destroy small, natural communities in the process. This has happened throughout history, including World War 1.”
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3. The US and British governments actively and incessantly armed the Afghan resistance to the Russian occupation during the 1980s, for their purely strategic interest in pushing back the Russian presence. The very same Afghan muhjahdeen, immediately afterwards became the foes of the west, sprouting into the barbaric, totalitarian ‘Taliban’ in Aghanistan. This is the nature of uncontrolled, incoherent, contradictory global foreign policy and opportunistic pacts and alliances – concerned solely with short-term, selfish geo-political interests.
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4. British Sikh campaigners are expressing their concerns about the engulfing fire of jihadism, which is currently manifest in the Middle-East. Modern-day jihadism like the Pope’s vicious, genocidal crusades of previous centuries, is a devastating plague on the world scene, which is directly targeting non-Muslim peoples across the globe – Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia. In past centuries, it had devastated the various peoples of South Asia.
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5. “The west should speak to the Sikhs to learn the profound and indelible lessons of jihadism. We have suffered it’s gruesome and genocidal affects for hundreds of years.” Says Jagdeesh Singh of SCAN. “The current and enduring British government panic about the seemingly unstoppable giant of jihadism, and its ominous incursions into British territory, are very telling; as too are its abject failure to engage with the Sikhs who have been a prime historic resistance against jihadism.”
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6. The multiple experiences of the Sikh people across the globe, as a stateless people, demonstrates to them and similarly stateless people like the Kurds, the dire effects and gross vulnerable of having no government, no state and no safe territory. Sikhs have been forced to flee time and time again, in the 1947 partition of their home country, in the Uganda expulsion of the early 1970s, the 9-11 global hate backlash and currently the Aghanistan experience. “The Sikhs are like a ship without a place to anchor.” Says Jagdeesh Singh of the Sikh Community Action Network. “History and modern global experience has shown that we will remain exposed and unsafe, until we have our own free state, again.”
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End –
Date: August 18, 2014
Categories: Articles
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