India suspends visas for Canadians as row escalates

I didn't say that the corrupt culture has much to do with the oppression of minorities. By that factor, Gujarat should have been doing severely poorly. But oppressing minorities seems to be something all of these states tend to want to do some time or the other. That's just something that's bad for business and economic growth, but still doesn't explain why these states are uniformly corrupt, even worse so than poorer states like Sikkim or Odisha.

Everything is relative. Objectively humans are shitty to other humans, and Those In Power get away with as much as they can without losing it.

Having said that:

According to the latest complete 2022 rankings of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World, Canada is the 5th freest country in the world. The United States is 61st. India is 87th.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index, Canada is 12th in the world. The United States is 30th. India is 46th.

> You are talking about countries which invaded other nations on very shaky grounds.

Who did Canada invade on shaky grounds?

> While the Khalistanis were getting a free reign, shall we talk about how Canada treats its indigenous people? From residential school graves to those who oppose land encroachment for oil mining?

Would love to. It's horrific, and Canada hasn't done enough to issue financial and societal reparations to it's first nations. I believe firmly that Canada should return significant "Crown Land" to first nations group (aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Back). Should honor treaties, and never encroach on first nations land for mining or pipelines.

And if a Canadian First Nations Nijjar equivalent was in hiding in India while fighting for the rights of Indigenous Canadians and Canada killed him, there would be protests in the streets of Canada and I would be there with them.

OK, your turn.

> Canada is known to neglect very insidious activities due to political biases.

Non-Indian Citation Needed

> Ok then - I guess by your standards, the conspiracy that led to 9-11 in US was just an expression of 'free speech' in their country and that the same applies to Chinese interference in Canada.

I actually don't know enough about what the Chinese justification is for electoral interference. My possibly uninformed opinion is that China is attempting to dominate the 21st century politically, and in order to do so it attempts to influence the governments of every country in the world much as the US has in the 20th. I don't believe this is a good thing, but I also suspect they'll get away with it. As far as I know this is State-on-State brinksmanship. We're talking about the actions of individuals.

I don't know what you mean when you talk about the 9-11 conspiracy, however the historical narrative that 9-11 was in many ways a response to decades of US interventionism is pretty clear.

The rest of your post shows there is no point us continuing to go back and forth. You stated something is unacceptable to international norms and goes beyond freedom of expression. I asked you for evidence that it violates international norms which you did not. And I don't think my criteria for freedom of expression is unusual.

> US for all its problems is not known to bend their political spine to separatists in another nation. Canada on the other hand, is soon going to have a nice international label of being an offshore haven for separatists, saboteurs and terrorists. Enjoy your rep.

The US is not the bar for hypocrisy or morality. Canada does not have this reputation from anyone except India.

The CSIS thing is complex. Like I said, it's universal within Canada that it was a fuckup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182

> The Governor General-in-Council in 2006 appointed the former Supreme Court Justice John C. Major to conduct a commission of inquiry. His report, which was completed and released on 17 June 2010, concluded that a "cascading series of errors" by the Government of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had allowed the terrorist attack to take place.

Note: nuanced phrasing here - "had allowed the terrorist attack to take place" means that their negligence and incompetence led to it not being stopped. Not that they knew it was going to happen and allowed it.

But I definitely can see the concern of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182#Destroyed...

> "The CSIS investigation was so badly bungled that there was a near mutiny by CSIS officers involved in the probe," said the agent who destroyed the tapes once he had been granted anonymity in January 2000 by Globe and Mail journalists.[143] One agent "said he felt compelled to destroy the tapes (that were in his possession) because he was morally obliged to do everything in his power to protect the safety of his sources. '[I] decided it was a moral issue... If their identity had become known in the Sikh community, they would have been killed. There is no doubt in my mind about that.'"

I ultimately don't know what I would do in this situation. These moral choices are not black-and-white. Do you seek to improve the likelyhood of convicting someone of murder by X%, if it increases the likelyhood of more deaths by Y%?

I genuinely don't know. If you read on, the CSIS connection is also tenuous.

Again, the CSIS fucked up royally. Just like the CIA, FBI, and all the american intelligence agencies fucked up royally when they failed to prevent 9/11. These things do happen, but I do not believe for a second that it was a conspiracy.

Would the investigation have gone differently if the victims were white? Honestly, probably, yes. But to be clear, that is a problem of institutional racism within western democracies - not a geopolitical stance Canada has against India, Punjab, or Khalistan.

The distinction does matter. Because you're using Canadian incompetence in getting convictions in the Air India bombing to suggest that they have a vested desire to somehow protect, or enable Sikh terrorists.

But if you're saying that they fucked up the Air India trial is because of racism, then why would they want to protect Nijjar from India? Just throw him over the fence and make him India's problem.

A diplomatic compromise to demonstrate to India that Canada is not doing "nothing" while not actually punishing him judiciously.

> Cooperate for deeper investigation?

India should have plenty of evidence to be able to charge him, try him, and convict him in absentia, then demand Canada extradite him. That they haven't done so is a strong hint that they don't have enough evidence that would hold up in a modern justice system.

> On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was targeted and killed by a U.S. drone strike.. [1]

I in no way defend or excuse the United States' history of extra-judicial killings around the world. The US is absolutely hypocritical when it comes to international relations, has done much to destabilize democratic institutions in the world (mostly to keep them from embracing more leftist/communist ideologies that would threaten American Capitalist economic interests)

The assassination of this general will be remembered as an egregious act of the Trump administration, however it is only the latest in a long line of these kind of actions under the administrations of both political parties.

The US gets away with it because it's the most powerful economy and military in the world. Noone else does, nor should they.

I deserve this call-out. I acknowledge I'm uninformed, and I am attempting to get more informed through the various discussions on this thread.

But it's VERY hard to fact-check a lot of the things being said. Some are leading with obvious bias. You are not. I'm inclined to believe more of what you have to say.

I assure you I am not malicious. I have a great respect for India, Hindus, Sikhs, Punjabs, and Canadians. I have a great disrespect for Narendra Modi and his policies. I do not support terrorism, but I also fall short of saying that non-violent resistance is the only path to liberation. History has vindicated violence as a means to achieve freedom in many contexts.

My understanding of the history of tensions within India between Sikhs and the rest of the country is painted based on broad incidents, like the assassinations of leaders, Golden Temple, etc. I gather my instincts from that.

But for modern perspectives, it is incredibly hard for me from my western bubble to get accurate impartial information or statistics. What percentage of Punjab citizens want independence? What percentage of Punjabi Canadians in the diaspora? What percentage support violence to achieve Khalistan?

I would like to learn.

Many threads have drawn comparisons to Quebec. I moved to Canada as an immigrant in 1995. I was infatuated with the country. And I was immediately confronted with the country's 2nd largest subdivision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Quebec_referendum coming inches within 0.6% of voting to leave. I was furious. I didn't understand. I spent the next decade of my youth joking to anyone who would hear that "Canada should've kicked Quebec out for the vote being so close. They would have died economically, and they would've crawled back begging."

Then I looked into the actual history of Quebec and Canada. And I understood just how much propaganda and misinformation exists in English-language Canada that mocks Quebecois uniqueness and interests.

And I decided I actually understand why so many Quebecers wanted to separate, but that I wanted them to stay because their uniqueness is vital to the Canadian spirit. I can't imagine what I would think if the history was as violent as it was with Sikhs within India.

Which is why I keep doubting the premise that these sentiments only exist in the diaspora outside of Punjab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva

Are these western (I'm not American) inventions?

Fair trials are indeed a cornerstone of liberal democracy, with fairness being an attribute given to those accused of a crime, not necessarily the unfortunate victims. The accused tends to get the benefit of the doubt because of the cost of the loss of freedoms that hinge on a guilty verdict. CSIS fucked up. The RCMP fucked up. But there is a standard to which prosecutions are held and the government didn't meet it.

And none of this excuses _gunning down a person sitting in their car_ which, in case you forgot, was the original topic of this discussion. It doesn't matter who they associated with, what they were involved with, or what they did.

As for liberal democracies: you'll find many examples of the spies (i.e. counter-intelligence) working at cross purposes to the criminal justice system. Think MI5 vs the Met, or the NSA vs local law enforcement. The spooks are often much more interested in protecting sources and methods than they are in criminal prosecutions. That's partly why the USA has gotten so good at parallel construction.

In either case, India wouldn't need evidence from anybody else to determine its own innocence or guilt, because surely it knows whether it did what it is being accused of doing.

I don't get how you infer support of Canada's allegations from a statement that the Indian government doesn't need to rely on Canada's evidence to determine whether or not they carried out an assassination, since they either know that they did it or know that they didn't do it.

> Or the attacks may have been carried out by a rogue agent, with no hand of the Indian government in it.

What do you think I meant when I said, "Third party evidence is relevant only to the extent that they didn't do it as a matter of state policy but a rogue agent or group might have done it."

It would be nice if your responses to other people's posts showed some sign that you were actually reading those posts rather than going off on a canned tirade that isn't in any meaningful way relevant to what it is nominally a response to.

I agree. Except in every one of those definitions in impartial sources like Wikipedia, categorizes the Conservatives as "right", and PPC as "far right"

> There are no major federal parties in Canada to the "right" of that. None offer a platform that would end immigration, deport most foreigners,

So long as people who lived through World War 2 remained alive, we called people that advocated for this fascists, and they held no sway in most elections or political representation. Once the majority WW2 veterans started dying, suddenly these perspectives started rising again under a new coat of paint.

> significantly reduce the size of the federal government

It's cute that conservatives still pretend that this policy disagreement is still in any way of a signifier between left and right wing parties ANYWHERE in the world. US right wing parties, for instance, do not reduce the size of their governments. They just reassign their priorities to things like processing citizen reports of abortions, or banning books in school libraries.

> , and end taxation, for example.

Does anyone actually think this is a good idea? Are we intending to go back to the days of private firefighters not putting out on fire buildings that didn't pay them?

The point is that you haven’t heard of it because you don’t live in the area that it is distributed in.

It’s not gonna start in Regina!

Yes, because the ones who migrated and cry out for Khalistan are a bunch of cowards seeking refuge in the West in the name of oppression. If they were actually interested in freedom, they would have stayed in India and carried on the fight. At least the majority of Kashmiris had the courage to stay back and carry on the fight, even under the covers, and not migrate en masse.

I had attended an event for the Sikh community a few years back, which was attended by Sikhs from all over the world, including from USA, Australia, the UK and India. Nowhere in another community have I seen a strong culture of brotherliness and felicitation for good. And while there were a few Canadian Sikh families, they were far too few to be countable in one hand. Tells a lot about the kind of Sikhs that Canada is harboring, tbh.

>I made an assumption and it might be flawed. I would love to find some concrete data.

These two together don't compute. You obviously have a tilt that anything coming out of India is "biased source" while international one is unbiased somehow. So, why even pretend that you want some concrete data.

And that basically is the issue. Indian evidence, data and proofs are treated with suspicion. While Western data is somehow clean. If this is not a classist mindset I don't know what is.

Besides, you should wait at least a decade or two before talking about consequences. Things don't change that quickly in international relations, because the stakes are so big. But they do change, as you can see from the relations between Russia and the West.

"Whataboutism" is easy because it's purely syntactic, every time someone says "What about ...", you are allowed to accuse them of it--instead of having to confront, in good faith, an implied accusation of hypocrisy.

It's like Orwellian newspeak, but the new word is less expressive and more likely to confuse the disagreement.

even children are taught that 2 wrongs don't make a right

I'm not saying you were raised wrong though

If that is the case, I'd have hoped it would be viral by now. But anyhow, they would have to establish the link between the Pavan Kumar Rai's activities and the killer. The killer who they have not identified.

It's similar to when Biden said Russia's Nord stream gas pipelines will be no more if Russia invades Ukraine. When the sabotage was done, no one could blame the US since there was no evidence linking it to them.