A decade ago this month, lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and his friend Hardeep Singh Nijjar were in Geneva to deliver a petition calling on the United Nations to declare widespread killings of Sikhs in India in 1984 a genocide.
India restored electronic visa services for Canadian nationals, an Indian foreign ministry official said on Wednesday, two months after Canada alleged the South Asian nation was involved in the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada.
Canada's Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez and the RCMP say an investigation is underway into what they call "threats" against Air India, after an online video warned people not to fly on the airline on Nov. 19.
India reportedly wants 41 of 62 Canadian diplomats out of the country by early next week — a striking, if largely anticipated, deepening of the rift that erupted last month following Trudeau's explosive allegations in the House of Commons.
The attacks seem to have hit institutions controlled by the government, but not the core infrastructure from which federal departments and agencies operate.
Eby's statement came on the same day that gurdwara councils in B.C. and Ontario called for the immediate suspension of all security and intelligence agreements with India and repeated their calls for a public inquiry into the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is calling for India's help to investigate the killing of a Sikh independence activist on Canadian soil, while New Delhi says Canada has provided no information on the case.
Experts warn a months-long diplomatic row with India is only just beginning — and they suggest that better transparency around the investigation of a Sikh leader's killing and ramped-up efforts against foreign interference can inhibit the emboldening of other countries.
India's visa processing centre in Canada suspended services on Thursday as a rift widened between the countries after Canada's leader said India may have been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen.
