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Canada seeks to tighten grip over Babbar Khalsa

Arthur J Pais

On several occasions, Davinder Singh, on his own admission, has crossed the Canadian border into British Columbia -- the hotbed of Sikh radicalism in North America -- apparently to meet with his relatives.

As a green card holder, he does not need a visa to visit Canada. The crossing takes less than five minutes. A quick look at the green card -- and he would be waved in.

But about 10 days ago, Canadian authorities took a sterner view of Singh's visit -- and decided that his visit will go against its 'national interest'.

Though his deportation to America has created a stir among radical Sikhs, a full picture is slowly emerging about the incident.

The Canadian officials contested he was going to visit just a cousin and attend a wedding. Now they say Davinder Singh was going to meet with top leaders of the Babbar Khalsa's Canadian wing.

Rejecting his claim that the Babbar Khalsa International he is involved with has nothing to do with the organisation bearing that name in India, and that his visit was a personal one, Canadian authorities deported Singh to America where he has a refugee status.

Insiders believe the deportation is among the many steps being taken by the government to weaken the BKI.

Immigration officers told the media two days ago that Singh identified Gurdev Singh Gill as Kala Baba, one of his contacts in the BKI.

Gill, who is listed as a director of the Satnam Education Society, which receives $ 2.5 million from the British Columbia government every year to run two schools in Vancouver, could come under closer scrutiny, and if proved to be connected with the BKI could lose the funding.

Immigration officer Rick McNeill told Canadian newspapers this weekend that at Singh's hearing this week "an intelligence source indicated that Mr Singh was coming to Canada to meet with other Babbar Khalsa members".

According to the local media, the Babbar Khalsa meeting planned for last weekend was to take place after members gathered for a wedding on Saturday at Surrey's Dasmesh Darbar temple.

The groom, Jaswinder 'Happy' Singh Parmar, was a close friend of Talwinder Singh Parmar and lived at the latter's home after immigrating from India. Parmar, a former Vancouver resident who died seven years ago, was the prime suspect in the 1985 Air-India bombing.

Canadian officials believe the BKI is the most feared Sikh faction representing hard-core militants.

The BKI's British Columbia unit, led by Ajaib Singh Bagri, has registered non-profit status, according to the finance ministry's corporate registry. However, at the federal level, the Bagri group lost its charitable status in April 1996, according to The Vancouver Sun after Reform member of Parliament, Val Meredith, raised questions about the group's alleged terrorist links.

'How can a group that the federal government considers to be terrorist be a legal, non-profit society in BC?' she was asked last week.

Meredith said information has not been shared between the federal and provincial governments with regard to the Babbar Khalsa and other groups with terrorist links.

'There needs to be a better partnership,' she told the media. 'Perhaps there should be a sharing of information not just on this issue but on a number of justice issues.'

She said the federal government has made the decision that the Babbar Khalsa is a terrorist group and acted on it, by deregistering it as a charity and deporting members who enter Canada.

'What has to happen is the process needs to move down to the provincial jurisdiction,' she said. 'It takes somebody to expose the connection.'

In BC, hardline and moderate Sikhs have fought many violent battles in the past decade. A moderate Sikh editor was killed apparently at the behest of some hardliners a few months ago. Moderate Sikhs who took control of the key gurdwara in Vancouver, the key city in BC, have been saying for more than three months that they fear retaliation from the hardliners.

It was this fear that led many of them to petition the state department not to grant a visa to then Akal Takht jathedar Bhai Ranjit Singh.

The moderates were afraid that Bhai Ranjit Singh, who was to visit San Jose and several American cities with a significant number of hardline Sikhs, would issue new pronouncements against the moderates from his American sanctuaries.

As for Davinder Singh's deportation, it came a week ago, after the San Jose resident spent three days in a Canadian jail, and his case was reviewed at the cabinet level.

Though Singh appealed against the decision, his lawyer said the deportation and concomitant publicity made it more difficult for his client to return to Canada.

His lawyer, Barinder Sanghera, said his client was being singled out though "he was a hard-working US resident with no criminal record".

Sanghera said Singh had been to Canada many times before without incident and always returned to his San Jose home after visiting for the weekend.

''If Canada did not want Singh, why wasn't he sent back to America immediately?'' Sanghera asked.

"I submit the only reason they detained him is so they could get a deportation order so he could not return," Sanghera said.

Immigration officer Murray Wilkinson told BC newspapers that his department considers Singh a threat.

Another immigration official Shaw Dyck said Singh appeared to be a hard-working, sincere man, but that his 'personal character' was not the issue.

"I find there are reasonable grounds to believe that the BKI is or was engaged in terrorism," Dyck said, adding that Singh also admitted being a member of the All India Sikh Student Federation before he moved to California in 1990.

While Singh testified that the US Babbar Khalsa group is not affiliated with the group that operates out of India and Pakistan, which has taken responsibility for terrorist acts, Shaw Dyck said she didn't accept there was no link.

"There is no evidence that Mr Singh has satisfied the minister (for immigration) that his admission to Canada would not be detrimental to the national interest."

He will not be allowed to return to Canada without getting special permission from the federal minister of immigration, Shaw said.

McNeill noted that in Singh's interview at the border, he admitted that an IBK leader who has been underground for 22 years calls him in the US regularly. But McNeill did not reveal the name of the underground leader.

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