Thesis On June 23, 1985, at 7:13 Greenwich Mean Time, Sikh separatists bombed Indian Airlines flight 182, a boeing 747, over the Irish coast, killing all 329 passengers and crew on board as well a second bomb going off in Tokyo’s Narita Airport killing two others. The Sikh separatists involved in this attack, known as Babbar Khalsa, were aiming for Hindu people, not specifically Canadians, and were immigrants to Canada, where they placed a suitcase bomb on flight 182 heading from Toronto to Bombay. After countless demands for answers, in 2010 (25 years later), a 4000 page inquiry was released by John Major, a retired Supreme Court of Canada justice. The inquiry highlighted the flaws the Canadian government took during this whole situation …show more content…
Even with the constant surveillance that recorded behaviours that one would deem suspicious, especially for a known terrorist, the Canadian government failed to act. Because the Canadian government ignored several signs and warnings, they took insufficient precautions that allowed for their plans for terrorism follow through.
In 1981, Talwinder Singh Parmar, the Chief of Babbar Khalsa, fled to Vancouver after a shoot out killing two punjabi police officers in Ludhiana, India. India then notified Canada that Parmar was a known terrorist wanted for 6 murders. In 1982, India requested Parmar to be extradited for trial but was denied because “India does not recognize the Queen as Head of State, so that the Commonwealth extradition protocol does not apply”. and instead put under surveillance with
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Grewal explains to agents how he and a French-Canadian (later confirmed to be Boudreault) got involved with a group of Sikh militants who were planning to plant a bomb on an Air India flight. Grewal’s statement was dismissed as “unreliable” and his deals were not met.
The most credible warning was given recorded in June of 1985, about a week before the bombing. Paul Besso, a paid informant for the RCMP, was investigating, while wired, suspected Sikh drug dealers in Duncan and Port Albani when they brought up plans to target Air India within days to a week. The whole conversation had been recorded by the RCMP and yet nothing was done about it.
The Canadian government could have done a lot more to prevent the attack. The failure to report the bomb testings, failure to act on radical signs shown from a known terrorist and negligence towards consistent reports of bomb threats by multiple sources, one of which is a paid informant were all preventable issues. These preventable issues before the bombing let an act of terrorism take place that took the lives of 329 men, women and
The tendency to racially discriminate and victimise against certain minorities or a specific nationality was a long-lasting sting of racism which was a part of Canadian history. The discrimination by Canadians directed towards Japanese-Canadians during WWII was a significant historical event that needs to be addressed. After the Pearl Harbour attacks in Hawaii by the Japanese navy, 24,000 Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps, where they were stripped of their identity and freedom of rights based upon their racial origin. In the aftermath of the internment, many Japanese-Canadian natives were left without life savings, as all of their belongings were confiscated and never given back. This internment of the Japanese-Canadians occurred
by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The two men in which didn't even know the
On October 5, 1970, British trade commissioner James Cross was kidnapped in his Westmount home by members of the terrorist group Front de liberation du Quebec. The FLQ Manifesto called for non-democratic separation to be brought about by acts of terror. From 1963 to 1967, the FLQ planted 35 bombs; from 1968 to 1970 they planted over 50 bombs. By the fall of 1970 the terrorist acts of the FLQ cells had claimed 6 lives. The kidnappers' demands included the release of a number of convicted or detained FLQ members and the broadcasting of the FLQ Manifesto. The Manifesto was read on Radio-Canada. Then, on October 10th, the Quebec minister of justice guaranteed safe passage to anywhere in the world for the kidnappers in exchange for the safe release of Cross. That same day Pierre Laporte, a famed Quebec reporter, author of The True Face of Duplessis, and the minister of immigration and labour in the Quebec government, was kidnapped by a different FLQ cell on the lawn of his suburban home. Laporte's kidnapping triggered a phone call from Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa asking Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to prepare the Canadian Armed Forces for action in Quebec and to declare War Measures. Two days later, October 12, Trudeau summoned armed troops to guard potential targets in Ottawa and Montreal such as cabinet ministers, John Diefenbaker, who was on the FLQ hit list, and federal buildings. On the following day, October 13, Peter Reilly of CJOH and I were at the west door of the Centre Block of the House of Commons. Reilly was asking Trudeau some basic questions in a laconic, unemotional style about the army and tanks being in Ottawa. Suddenly we were joined by CBC reporter Tim Ralfe who asked Trudeau a very emotional question about his decision to invoke the War Measures Act. Pierre Trudeau interview
... Canadians' trust in their government to handle situations such as this wavered. And lastly, why not do as others had success with? The Americans already utilised the method of spending their way out of a depression, and it had worked for them, at least to a degree. It was enough to save millions of lives and give hope to the people! So why not do as they did? Why wait so long for the situation to be too late to heal? The Canadian government were not very successful in their efforts in dealing with the Great Depression. Replacing prime ministers (twice) and making only minor changes ultimately did Canada no good. The government's poor efforts in their attempts to resolve
The Process of Identification The eyewitness in this article, Mr. Gauci, was first questioned on 1 September 1989, about 9 months after the purchase, and was shown the clothing that was in the suitcase with the explosive in the plane. The shopkeeper recognized the pattern of the clothing and remembered there had been a man who came into the store sometime in the winter of 1988 and bought several pieces of clothing. He described the event and said that after the man was done shopping, he went out and opened an umbrella because it had been raining and then the shopper and the man took the things out to a taxi. Mr. Gauci mentioned how the man was about 6ft tall or more and spoke Libyan.
The Murray and McCoy article, From Middle Power to Peace Builder: The Use of Canadian Force in Modern Canadian Foreign Policy discussed Canada’s foreign policy and how it changed Canada. This article exposes the mistakes Canada went through as a nation and the consequences of what happened when wrong decisions were made.
...e Canada tend to not put others lives in perspective and to not think about what may or may not be happening to them. We are so fortunate to not be in a place where most people don’t starve to death and whole villages have to move because of bombing in their area or some other bad event to take place.
How to appropriately and fairly carry out criminal justice matters is something that every country struggles with. A major reason for this struggle is the fallibility of the justice system. It is acceptable to concede that the possibility of human error in every case and investigation may lead to a wrongful conviction. In the case of David Milgaard, however, Canada's Criminal Justice System not only erred, but failed grievously, resulting in millions of dollars wasted, in a loss of public confidence in the system, and most tragically, in the robbery of two decades of one man's life. Factors including, but not limited to, the social context at the time of the crime, the social perception of deviance, the influence of the media, and the misconduct of investigating police and prosecution played a substantial role in the subsequent miscarriage of justice.
Anand, A. (2011). Combating terrorist financing: Is Canada’s legal regime effective? University of Toronto Law Journal, 61(1), 59-71. Retrieved from http://library.mtroyal.ca:2078/journals/university_of_toronto_law_journal/v061/61.1.anand.html
On September 15th 2001, 4 days after the worst attack on American soil, a Sikh owner of a Chevron Gas station in a Phoenix suburb was murdered by a gunman. This was one of the first major cases of violence against Sikh-American in wake of the attacks. The 42 year old gunman Frank Roque killed 49 year old Balbir Singh Sodhi because he was lashing out at "Arabs" after watching repeated footage of World Trade Center attacks on television. When Mr. Roque was being arrested he repeatedly shouted "I stand for America all the way." NewsFeed Timeline A History of Violence against Sikhs in the Wake of 911 Comments. (2012). Retrieved from http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/06/timeline-a-history-of-violence-against-sikhs-in-the-wake-of-911.
It also has a negative effect on the esteem of Canada as it can be viewed as a hypocritical democratic nation, in which a model peacekeeping nation used a totalitarian force such as the War Measures Act. By unjustly punishing Canadian citizens, enforcing conscription as well as being used unnecessarily to address apprehended threats, the usage of the War Measures Act was neither fair nor necessary. The unjust punishment of citizens allowed by the War Measures Act was iniquitous. When it was used in World War One, World War Two and the October Crisis, it led to the unjust punishment of Canadians by causing the internment of “enemy aliens” as well as the forced registration with the government. In World War One, Canada had been in war with Germany, Austria, Hungary and Ukraine.... ...
"Building Resilience Against Terrorism: Canada’s Counter-terrorism Strategy." Government of Canada, Public Safety Canada. Government of Canada, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 09 Nov. 2013.
The Telegraph. (2005). July 7 inquiry: timeline of the 7/7 terror attacks - Telegraph. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8055112/July-7-inquiry-timeline-of-the-77-terror-attacks.html. [Accessed 01 March 2014].
If we as a Nation do nothing about it and stand on the sidelines, Canada would potentially be looked upon negatively instead of what we were known for in the past. “If Canada (and others) took the billions of Dollars being spent on Bombing and instead spent these funds on food, clean water, shelter and medical aid for the refugees in these areas, the following might just happen; first Canada could be viewed as humanitarian rather than invasive. Secondly fewer of the disenfranchised would be drawn to extremist groups. Thirdly the threats to Canada would diminish. Canada would become a safer place.
History is no more confined to a monolithic collection of facts and their hegemonic interpretations but has found a prominent space in narratives. The recent surge in using narrative in contemporary history has given historical fiction a space in historiography. With Hayden White’s definition of history as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse” literature is perceived to be closer to historiography, in the present age (ix). History has regained acceptance and popularity in the guise of fiction, as signified by the rising status of historical fiction in the post colonial literary world.