NEW DELHI (AP) — India officially protested on Saturday the Canadian government’s allegation that the country’s powerful home minister Amit Shah had ordered the targeting of Sikh activists inside Canada, calling it “absurd and baseless.”
Relations between the two countries soured after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last year there were credible allegations the Indian government had links to the assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India has vehemently rejected the accusation.
New Delhi — long anxious about Sikh separatist groups — has increasingly accused the Canadian government of giving free rein to separatists from a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, in India.
The diplomatic row led to the expulsion of each other’s top diplomats last month.
“The Government of India protests in the strongest terms to the absurd and baseless references made to the Union Home Minister of India,” Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman of India’s foreign ministry told reporters Saturday.
Jaiswal also said a Canadian diplomat in New Delhi was summoned on Friday and handed out a letter to formally protest the allegation. “Such irresponsible actions will have serious consequences for bilateral ties,” he warned.
Canada’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison told Parliament members of the national security committee on Tuesday that he had confirmed Shah’s name to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations. Morrison did not explain how Canada knew of Shah’s alleged involvement.
Canadian authorities have repeatedly said they shared evidence with India whose officials deny being provided with any proof. New Delhi calls the allegations ridiculous.
Nijjar was a local leader of the Khalistan movement, banned in India. India designated him a terrorist in 2020, and at the time of his death was seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest in India. He lived in Canada, where about 2% of the population is Sikh, for nearly three decades.
Shah, who is 60 years old, is responsible for India’s internal security, as the country's home minister. He is widely considered the second most powerful politician in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shah has also been a close aide of Modi for decades.
Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. The U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges in mid-October against an Indian government employee in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.
New Delhi at the time expressed concern and said India takes the allegations seriously.
FILE - Indian Home Minister Amit Shah speaks during a public meeting before Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel filed his nomination for the upcoming Gujarat state assembly elections in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Members of Venezuela’s political opposition who have been sheltering for months in the Argentine diplomatic compound in the capital, Caracas, on Saturday detailed their deteriorating living conditions as they sought to grow a sense of urgency among the governments working to secure their safe departure from their home country.
Their comments to reporters via an online news conference came three days after Argentina’s government urged the Organization of American States to pressure Venezuela to allow the safe passage of the six members of the opposition living at the ambassador’s residence.
The harassment, according to those who spoke to reporters, includes constant surveillance by heavily armed security agents, the interruption of water and electric services, and this week’s arrest of a longtime local employee of the Argentine embassy.
“We are seeing how the process of violating our basic human rights is accelerating, and it is urgent to be able to stop this situation of control and repression against us, whether psychological or real,” said Magalli Meda, campaign manager of opposition powerhouse María Corina Machado.
Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello last week called the group’s allegations a “farce.”
The government of President Javier Milei in August transferred custody of the diplomatic compound in Caracas to Brazil after Venezuela expelled Argentina’s diplomats. The move followed a July presidential election marred by serious fraud allegations and which both President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition claim to have won.
But Maduro revoked Brazil’s authorization to guard the facility in September, even though that nation’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had attempted to help Venezuela break its political stalemate following the presidential vote.
“The Brazilian Foreign Ministry has made the contacts and the corresponding arrangements,” said Pedro Urruchurtu, who along three other men and two women has lived at the diplomatic facility since March. "We ask Brazil to have a much greater sense of urgency, in this sense it means redoubling efforts and coordination with the region and understanding that this situation can clearly get worse and therefore demands the attention of the entire region.”
Venezuela’s protracted political crisis deepened after the July 28 presidential election. The country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the election winner hours after polls closed. But unlike previous presidential elections, electoral authorities did not provide detailed vote counts.
Meanwhile, the opposition, led by Machado, collected tally sheets from 80% of the nation’s electronic voting machines, posted them online and said the voting records showed that the faction’s candidate, Edmundo González, had won the election with twice as many votes as Maduro.
On Wednesday, more than a dozen members of the Organization of American States joined Argentina’s call on Maduro’s government to allow the safe passage of those living at the ambassador’s residence.
FILE - A police patrol car sits parked outside Argentina's embassy where some members of Venezuela's opposition are seeking asylum inside, in Caracas, Venezuela, July 31, 2024, three days after the contested presidential election. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
