According to the prosecution, Talwinder Singh
Parmar was the brain behind the plot to blow up Air
India.
is right. It looks Canada cannot successfully prosecute
terrorism cases. There must be a public inquiry
Ajit Singh Khalsa
AIR INDIA, JE ME SOUVIENS
March 18, 2005
by Phillip Todd
As the reaction to Wednesday’s Air India verdict
has widened, one response has echoed outward with
the most damning of criticisms: “Had this been
a tragedy that affected mainstream, white Anglo-Saxon
Canadians, I think the response would have been
very different.” That’s Lata Pada, who
lost her husband and two children to the Air India
attack, speaking Thursday amid intensifying calls
for a public inquiry into the handling of the case.
Like Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan, MediaScout
isn’t quite sure what the value of such an
inquiry would be. But that’s only because it
seems an irreproachable judgement to say that the
case was botched from the get-go because of underlying
racism, or if readers would prefer a more diplomatic
phrasing, a lack of political will. In case you’ve
not followed the story, here’s the recap: the
Mulroney government never even sent victims’
families its condolences—it considered this
an Indian tragedy in spite of most of the victims
being Canadian citizens. And, of course, Canada
and its law enforcement agencies were vastly different
in 1985: a lack of Punjabi translators and officers
of East Indian origin meant the RCMP had trouble
telling some key suspects apart.
The interview with Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh
on The National last night was particularly poignant.
In 1985, Dosanjh was beaten nearly to death for
speaking out against sectarian tensions in the Vancouver
Indo-Canadian community. He was asked what he, as
an Indo-Canadian, thought should be done now. Predictably,
Dosanjh stayed on message, supported McLellan and
urged those who had followed the trial to have faith
in the justice system and the appeals process. For
many Indo-Canadians it must have felt as though
nothing has changed. But something has changed.
For one, the media’s coverage of the trial
(of the Big Six, the CBC and the Globe, in particular)
has demonstrated that in the Canadian consciousness,
this is very much a national issue and one worth
following with a tenacity usually reserved for Ottawa-based
political reporting. While a public inquiry may
not get off the ground, the Indo-Canadian community
can take heart that sometimes the examples of failed
justice are the strongest motivators to ensuring
history never repeats itself
