Sikh separatist, focused as soon as for assassination, says India nonetheless attempting to kill him

It’s a telephone name Gurpatwant Singh Pannun remembers nicely. It was June 17, 2023. After enjoying telephone tag for a day, he and his shut aide in Canada lastly managed to attach.

“He told me that he was informed by the Canadian intelligence officials that there is a serious threat to his life and he might be killed,” Pannun recalled.

On that decision, his aide, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stated that assassins had been coming for Pannun as nicely. The dialog is seared into Pannun’s reminiscence due to what Nijjar instructed him — but additionally as a result of it was the final time the 2 males spoke.

The next day, gunmen shot Nijjar lifeless within the car parking zone of a Sikh temple exterior Vancouver, Canada. Canadian authorities have arrested 4 Indian nationals in reference to the homicide.

Nijjar’s warning for Pannun, a twin U.S.-Canadian citizen, additionally proved prescient. 5 months later, the U.S. Justice Division introduced it had foiled a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York Metropolis. An Indian nationwide was charged within the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, and has pleaded not responsible.

Nijjar’s killing and the purported plan to assassinate Pannun are a part of a broader development all over the world during which overseas governments search to silence critics abroad, together with in america.

Final week, prosecutors introduced prices towards a brand new defendant in Pannun’s case: a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, who allegedly orchestrated the plot.

In the previous few years, the Justice Division says it has foiled at the very least 4 assassination plots tied to a overseas energy. Three of these allegedly hyperlink again to Iran, together with one concentrating on Iranian-American activist and journalist Masih Alinejad. The fourth — allegedly concentrating on Pannun — includes India.

The Indian authorities denies any involvement in Nijjar’s killing or the purported plot towards Pannun.

After the U.S. introduced prices within the Pannun case, India arrange its personal inside inquiry to analyze. Simply over per week in the past, Indian officers had been in Washington for conferences to debate the case and for each side to offer an replace on their respective investigations.

The State Division known as the conferences “productive.” The Indian Embassy didn’t reply to a request for remark.

“Well-documented” threats from India

Pannun, who was born in India however moved to the U.S. in 1992, instructed NPR earlier this 12 months that the risk to his life got here as no shock.

“I have been threatened directly by the Indian parliamentarians while sitting in the Indian parliament,” he stated. “They have stated that we are going to kill Pannun, even if we have to do a surgical strike. These are well-documented, the statements of the government officials.”

Specifically, he factors to remarks Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a number of occasions in recent times, together with early this July in India’s parliament.

“Today, post 2014, India enters your home and kills you,” Modi stated earlier than lawmakers. “Carries out surgical strikes. Carries out air strikes.”

In Pannun’s view, Modi’s risk about how India offers with its perceived enemies is directed at folks like him.

Pannun is a Sikh separatist. He’s a number one determine within the Khalistan motion, which desires to create an impartial Sikh homeland carved out from northern India. He and his group, Sikhs for Justice, have been spearheading a worldwide referendum for independence.

Khalistan referendum marketing campaign

Pannun is a working towards legal professional. At his legislation workplace in Queens, packing containers of case recordsdata and authorized books lined the partitions. His authorized work pays the payments, however a lot of his time he dedicates to the Khalistan trigger.

In his workplace, he has a inexperienced display screen arrange and digital camera for the movies he produces and posts on-line for the marketing campaign.

Behind his desk hung a yellow and blue Khalistan flag. On the wall was a framed image of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, the holiest website in Sikhism.

Pannun and Nijjar first labored collectively to doc the occasions surrounding the Indian army’s assault on the temple in 1984, generally known as Operation Blue Star, and the federal government’s bloody, almost decade-long effort to stamp out an armed Sikh insurgency preventing for independence. Hundreds had been killed.

The 2 males then shifted their focus to the long run and began the Khalistan referendum marketing campaign. The concept is to have Sikhs all over the world vote on the query of making an impartial Sikh state. It’s an unofficial referendum, and never legally binding.

Pannun has devoted his life to the marketing campaign. He instructed his household years in the past that his advocacy work would put him at odds with India’s authorities.

“I have told them very clearly what it would entail and where it can lead,” he stated. “That’s why when we are talking about assassination attempts and killings and threats, that doesn’t come as a surprise to us. That doesn’t come as a surprise to the family.”

“Survive to the finish line”

The Modi authorities in 2020 designated Pannun and Nijjar terrorists for his or her separatist work.

Pannun rejects the allegation. He stated he follows the legislation, and that his marketing campaign is a peaceable, democratic course of.

India’s response, he stated, has been to come back after him, and that has pressured him to look over his shoulder.

“That’s how I’m going to survive to the finish line,” he stated.

The alleged assassination plot was not a one-off. He stated there are lively threats towards his life proper now. That hazard has not pressured him to finish his separatist work, however it has pressured him to take precautions.

At his workplace, a safety crew screens guests with a steel detector. Physique guards ferry him to and from work. He had safety earlier than the alleged plot, he stated, however he’s beefed it up for the reason that case was charged final 12 months.

“Today, what you see is very, very obvious,” he said of his security detail. “This is a message that I’m giving that I’m not out there to do it in suicide mode. I’m going to continue to campaign and I’m going to continue to protect myself.”

Nonetheless, the risk on his life has altered, to a level, how he operates. The interview with NPR was in his workplace, partly, as a result of it’s safe.

“I cannot just abruptly take a car and jump in the car and go anywhere,” he stated. “That’s what I have been advised by my security details. That’s where you get killed.”

He’s modified his residence a number of occasions for the reason that alleged plot was foiled. He doesn’t go to eating places a lot. He stated he hasn’t been to the grocery retailer in years; he will get issues delivered as an alternative. And he is curtailed his on-the-ground marketing campaign appearances.

Boycotting Indian-owned companies

He stays very lively on-line, although, and recurrently posts movies on Instagram. A few of them present pro-Khalistan rallies, whereas others provide heated challenges towards India or Indian officers.

In a single from final November, Pannun declares: “Sikhs are facing existential threat under the successive India regimes.”

“We are going to target India,” he provides. “From Air India to made in India, we are going to ground everything.”

Some Indian media shops interpreted that as a risk in mild of the 1985 bombing of an Air India passenger jet flying from Canada to India that killed greater than 300 folks. A Canadian Sikh was discovered responsible in 2003 for involvement within the bombing. A Canadian courtroom acquitted two others.

Pannun pushed again, calling that interpretation of his video an “Indian narrative,” and saying he was calling for a Sikh boycott of Indian-owned companies.

“The objective behind it is that I want the (Sikh) community to stop funding their own genocide,” he stated. “I want the community not to spend a dime on Indian-owned businesses.”

Breaking apart the Indian state

He’s additionally come underneath criticism over posters with the phrases “Kill India” and the names and images of Indian officers that the placards declare had been concerned in Nijjar’s killing. One of many officers pictured was Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s excessive commissioner, who was among the many six Indian diplomats not too long ago expelled from Canada.

Pannun stated his objective is to interrupt up the Indian state.

“I say to kill Modi politics. We are in America. We say ‘kill Biden politics,’ we say ‘kill Trump politics,’” Pannun stated. “’Kill India’ means balkanize India. India is not a human being. India is in a union of states. We want to balkanize India.”

A few of his posts on social media are about his late colleague and buddy, Nijjar. His assassination, Pannun stated, has left a gap.

“You feel the vacuum, but then you also get the strength and the courage: what Nijjar stood for, for what he gave his life, for what he has spent the last 15, 16 years with us,” he stated.

However Pannun additionally stated there’s no time to sit down again and grieve. There’s work to be performed, a marketing campaign to run, regardless of the dangers.

“I would rather take a bullet in my head than stop the Khalistan referendum campaign,” he stated.