SACRAMENTO, California: More than 60,000 US-Sikh citizens participated in the second round of the Khalistan referendum and voted under the protection of US snipers in a historic event organized by the splinter group Sakhs For Justice (SFJ). the police
On January 28 this year, 127,000 US-Sikhs voted for the first ever Khalistan referendum on American soil, just weeks after the US government announced that India had prevented an attack on the US. Home of pro-Khalistan leader and India’s most talked about man Gurpatwant Singh Pannu.
Several thousand Sikhs failed to vote in the first round. The poll on Sunday, March 31, was organized by the SFJ to accommodate Sikhs who failed to vote at the end of the first poll monitored by the Independent Punjab Referendum Commission (HHR). The vote was held under tight security, with US police and snipers guarding it.
As election day dawned, around 20,000 Sikh men and women lined up to cast their votes. Throughout the day, thousands of Sikhs remained in the center, singing songs of fervent Sikhism, calling for the creation of Khalistan and denouncing the plan to kill Sikhs by the Hindutva regime of Narendra Modi. The vote comes months after Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the leader of the Canadian Khalistan Referendum, was killed by Indian agents inside Canada’s largest Gurdwara, and US intelligence foiled an Indian government plan to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, who led the global Khalistan referendum campaign.
The draw was held on Sunday, March 31, but the big event began two days earlier with the Akhand Path Sahib, a ceremony by the Indian government to honor and declare Sikh religious leader Jathedar Gurdev Singh Kaun, who was brutally executed by the court. a “Quami Shahid” (martyr). from the Sikh nation). Thousands of Sikh families and individuals from Sacramento and surrounding areas attended prayers and paid their respects to Jathedar Kaun as a group of Sikh priests read the holy book Sri Guru Granth Sahib from cover to cover. On March 31, the Khalistan Referendum Polling Center in the state capital of California was also named and dedicated to Shaheed Jathedar Kaunke.
A few weeks before the Akhand Path Sahib in the capital of California, thousands of Sikhs from all over the world sent an official letter to Giani Ragbir Singh, the current chairman of Sri Akal Takht Sahib, and the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). Declares Jathedar Kaunk as ‘Quami Shahid’.
Gurdev Singh Kaunke was unanimously declared as the Chairman of Sri Akal Takht Sahib by the Supreme Assembly (Sarbat Khalsa) of the Sikh People in 1986. He was killed extrajudicially by the Indian police on 01 January 1993 for his active role in leading the movement for the religious and political rights of the Sikh community. More recently, in December 2023, the Punjab Human Rights Commission admitted that Jathedar Kaunke was extrajudicially killed by Indian security forces.
Advocate General Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Advocate General of SFJ, paid tribute to “Shaheed Kaunk, who worked tirelessly for the Sikh right to self-determination”.
Pannun said that Gurdev Singh Kaunk was martyred because he was loyal to the cause of Khalistan and wanted Sikhs to have a homeland. Pannun said Sikhs have walked the path of Kaunke and sacrificed their lives for Sikh rights, including UK-based Sikh leader Paramjeet Singh Pamma, who is jailed in Europe on an Indian extradition warrant.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun told the crowd, “The Sikh problem was supposed to be freed in 1947, but it started in the occupation of India. Since the 1950s, Hindutva has started suppressing the Sikhs to stop and degrade their identity, and this effort continues. In 1984, the Congress regime Hindutva attacked the holiest Sikh site, the Golden Temple, in Operation Blue Star, and committed genocide against thousands of Sikhs. The genocide that started under Congress continued under BJP and Modi.
“We call for the death of Modi’s politics in a democratic way. The Indian state is complicit in the genocide of Sikhs. Sikhs will do anything to destroy Indian hegemony and build their own homeland.”
The Punjab Referendum Commission has announced a new date for the Khalistan referendum which will be held on July 28, 2024 in Calgary, Canada.
