Media skirt Sikh vio

SORRY about this. I
was going to write
about the daffodils in
Victoria but the news
won’t fet me.

Especially the news from
Surrey, where Sikhs have been
whacking one another with
swords and kirpans ard where
guns have been used.

I've never heard of other
people smiting opponents in
churches. Not even the Mafia.
But that’s by the way. My
interest is in the way the mat-
ter has been treated.

Victoria has been silent.
Not a word out of Glen Clark,
for instance.

Nor have there been any
editorials denouncing the
Sikhs. The scribes have been
too busy writing about the
sins of our military.

Condemning Sikh violence
would be “racism.” But if
white sectarians had got up to
similar tactics the noise would
have been heard from coast to
coast.

The most The Province
could come up with was 2
spineless piece advising the
Sikhs to “take a breather and

avoid foolhardy acts that will
» KENerate UNSAVOTY Facist
comments.” Sure, let's have
none of those.

Also in The Province,
columnist Paul Schratz took
pen in hand to tell us about
the Sikhs’ good works. How
they feed the poor and how
we should hear more about
Sikh ball hockey for youth.

In The Vancouver Sun, Pete
McMartin served up a sermon
about religion, “Judeo-
Christians,” and how the bat-
tle going on in Surrey “mir-
rors western thinking itself.”

McMartin wishes them
well.

All of which reflects how
weak we have become and
how we will put up woth mur-
der and mayhem in the name
of political purity.

No matter that a hundred
cops had to be called out in
riot gear, or that injuries were
caused, or that shots were
fired through the windows of
a home.

The Sun put out a whole
page on Surrey. The headline
read:

“For B.C. Sikhs, the future
looks fractured.”

Yes. But not half as frac-
tured as it looks for the rest of
us, what with Asian gangs on
the loose, terrorism in
Vancouver night clubs, | the
Chinese triads moving in,
Vietnamese organizing, large
scale auto insurance fraud, and
even a “Persian Pride” gang in
North Vancouver.

Forget all that. Let’s just
feel good about the propagan-

da trom politicians, the media,
and academics, all of whom
agree that kind of immi-
gration w been gerting for
the past 25 years is just what
the doctor ordered.

About 30 Sikhs signed a
letter to The Sun over h
the headline read, “ nee is
anathema to the Sikh commu-
nity.”

Really: That’s news to me.
In 1914, when Canada sent
the Komagata Maru back to
India, — a vessel that was
packed with would-be illegal
Sikh immigrants — William
Hopkinson, the immigration
officer who was in charge of
the operation, was murdered.
So were four other people.

There was a plot to shoot
the Vancouver chief of police
at the funeral and Sikhs still
honor Hopkinson’s killer, one
Mewa Singh. In the early
1980s, a Sikh opened fire in a
Toronto cournoom killing
one man and paralyzing
another.

In 1986, four Sikhs tried
to Wipe out 2 visiting state
minister from the Punjab.
Two years after that a Sikh
publisher in B.C. was short and
crippled by a youth who did-
n’t like what the man was
writing.

It was a Sikh, too, who was
convicted of making a bomb
planted on a flight to Tokyo.
Two baggage handlers were
killed. Only by sheer chance
was a tragedy avoided similar
to the one that downed that
aircraft off the coast of Ireland
in which 329 people were

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killed. A Sikh murdered nine
people at a wedding in
Vernon where the apparent
main victim was his estranged
wife. Similar, if lesser, “crimes
of passion” have taken place
elsewhere in Canada.

The list of Sikh incidents of
violence is a long one. And
when a Sikh bodyguard killed
Indira Ghandi, local Sikhs
danced in the strcets. Literally.

We have an attorney gener-
al born in the Punjab who at
this writing had not had much
to say about the latest mess in
Surrey but before that had
been very vocal about “hate
crimes.”

“Zero tolerance for hate
crimes,” he trumpeted. So
what’s keeping him quiet
now?

Meanwhile, grovelling to

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the ethnic vote, the feds have
opened an immigration office
in the Punjab so that we can
have more Sikhs. Bur no spe-
cial offices have been opened
in any place whose culture is
like ours.

~— The North Shore News
believes strongly in freedom of
speech and the right of all sides
in a debate to be heard. The
columnists published in the

News present differing points of
view, but thase views arc not
necessarily those of the newspa-
per itself.

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