Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly on Friday said the remaining Indian diplomats in the country are “clearly on notice” not to harm Canadian lives as the standoff between the two nations triggered after allegations of Indian connection in the assassination of a Khalistani terrorist.
The diplomatic tensions erupted earlier this week after Canada expelled India’s high commissioner and five other diplomats, accusing them of being ‘persons of interest’ linked to the Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s murder probe. In a tit-for-tat action, India recalled its top envoy to Ottawa and expelled six Canadian diplomats.
“We’ve never seen that in our history. That level of transnational repression cannot happen on Canadian soil. We’ve seen it elsewhere in Europe. Russia has done that in Germany and the UK and we needed to stand firm on this issue,” Joly said in Montreal.
Asked if other Indian diplomats will be expelled, Joly said, “They are clearly on notice. Six of them have been expelled including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Others were mainly from Toronto and Vancouver and clearly, we won’t tolerate any diplomats that are in contravention of the Vienna convention.”
Canada Has ‘No Hard Proof’ Against India
Canada’s foreign minister, comparing India to Russia, said Canada’s national police force has linked Indian diplomats to homicides, death threats and intimidation in Canada. However, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently admitted that the country had provided ‘no hard proof’ for allegations against India.
“And at that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof,” Trudeau said, referring to the allegations he levelled against India, linking ‘Indian agents’ to the murder of Nijjar outside a gurdwara in Canada’s Surrey.
It came after Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public this week with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home.
Calling out the notorious Bishnoi crime gang, the RCMP said top Indian officials were passing information about Sikh separatists to Indian organised crime groups who were targeting the activists.
‘Cavalier Behaviour’: India Responds To Canada
Responding to Trudeau’s admission that he had no “hard evidentiary proof” and had only intelligence on allegations against India, the Ministry of External Affairs stated that it only ‘confirms’ New Delhi’s consistent stand that Canada has ‘presented us no evidence.’
The ministry further said, “The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, in response to media queries related to Justin Trudeau’s deposition, said, “What we have heard today only confirms what we have been saying consistently all along – Canada has presented us no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats.”
India has denied the allegations, calling them ‘absurd and baseless,’ and has repeatedly criticised Trudeau’s government for being soft on supporters of the Khalistan movement who live in Canada.
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