Canada’s Commons rejects genocide label for 1984 Sikh violence again

On Friday, Liberal Party MP Sukh Dhaliwal moved a motion in the House in this regard. The motion asked that the House “acknowledge and recognise that the crimes committed against Sikhs within India in 1984 constitute a genocide.”

However, that motion required unanimous consent from the MPs present at the time to be accepted but it was rejected after several nos were audible in the chamber as soon as Dhaliwal finished reading it out.

Later, he posted on X, “Today, I introduced a unanimous consent motion in Parliament to recognize the crimes committed against Sikhs in India during and after 1984 as genocide. Sadly, some Conservative MPs and one Liberal MP opposed it.”

The Liberal MP referred to was Indo-Canadian Chandra Arya who, in a statement, said, “While I am proud in having stopped this divisive agenda from succeeding today, we cannot afford to be complacent. Next time, we may not be as fortunate. The politically powerful Khalistani lobby will undoubtedly try again to push for Parliament to label the 1984 riots as genocide.”

Arya also raised a point of order in the House, stating on the floor he was threatened by two MPs for his opposition to the genocide motion. He said, “I was threatened inside the parliament building for standing up and saying no. There have been several attempts, both within the parliament and outside, to stop me from freely and publicly voicing the concerns of Hindu-Canadians.”

He said that Dhaliwal allegedly said he would be “effed up” and that he had been “aggressively accosted” by another MP in the lobby of the chamber.

Dhaliwal attempt came another motion, moved by New Democratic Party or NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, was blocked by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Thursday.

The “genocide” motion referred to the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in India following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in October 1984. The motions were an attempt to get Canada’s Parliament to recognise that atrocity on its 40th anniversary.

Arya acknowledged that violence, as he described it as “undeniably barbaric”, adding, “Thousands of innocent Sikhs lost their lives in those horrific events, and we all condemn this brutality without reservation.”

“However, labeling these tragic and dreadful riots as a genocide is misleading and unjustified. Such an assertion fuels the agenda of anti-Hindu forces and risks driving a wedge between the Hindu and Sikh communities in Canada. We must not let these divisive elements succeed in their efforts to destabilize harmony,” he added.