On Sunday August 22nd at 11am, Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara welcomes Mrs. Paramjit Kaur Khalra, the wife of Shaheed Sardar Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who disappeared by Indian Security Forces in September 1995. Mr. Khlara discovered approximately 25, 000 cases of extra-judicial killings in just three districts of Punjab. Mrs. Paramjit Kaur Khalra continues her husband’s work with the Khalra Mission Organization (KMO) which seeks to bring those responsible for human rights abuses to justice. Just recently, KMO released a name of 148 Punjab Police officers implicated in torture, abuse and extrajudicial killings. KMO continues to research the fate of the thousands of Sikh youth who remain missing and unaccounted for to this day.
Today, as our younger generations are growing up, as our children born after that morning of September in 1995 are teenagers bubbling with energy and a quest to know about their heritage and legacy, about what had happened to their people during the turbulent times, it is for us to establish our locus standi. Have we engaged enough with the memory of a man who was fighting for the dignity of fellow human beings? Even the dead ones? Or is the weight that the young weight lifter refused to lift for India now merely a burden on our souls?
Jaswant Singh Khalra will live on. His dedication to the cause will inspire our generations and his voice shall never be muffled. We owe nothing less to a man extraordinary.
More information on these Human Rights Violations and the work of Shaheed Jaswant Singh Khalra can be found through downloading the following two Books in PDF or by reading the Amnesty International Report:
1984 Sikhs Kristallnacht
PDF : Kristallnacht.pdf – SIZE : 3 MB
Amnesty International Report on Jaswant Singh Khalra
India: A Mockery of Justice: The case concerning the “disappearance” of human rights defender Jaswant Singh Khalra severely undermined
Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab
PDF : ReducedtoAshes.pdf – SIZE : 5 MB
Related posts:
