{"id":154804,"date":"2018-02-28T19:31:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T00:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=154804"},"modified":"2018-02-28T19:31:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T00:31:49","slug":"india-denies-baseless-claim-of-role-in-atwal-affair-trudeau-defends-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/02\/28\/india-denies-baseless-claim-of-role-in-atwal-affair-trudeau-defends-official\/","title":{"rendered":"India denies ‘baseless’ claim of role in Atwal affair; Trudeau defends official"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Justin<\/a>
Justin Trudeau doubled down Wednesday on his support for a senior government official who suggested factions in the Indian government sabotaged the prime minister’s trip to India last week \u2014 despite a flat denial from India’s external affairs ministry which labelled the theory \u201cbaseless and unacceptable.\u201d (Photo<\/a>: Justin Trudeau\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 Justin Trudeau doubled down Wednesday on his support for a senior government official who suggested factions in the Indian government sabotaged the prime minister’s trip to India last week \u2014 despite a flat denial from India’s external affairs ministry which labelled the theory \u201cbaseless and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he got some back up from a leading Sikh politician in India, who alleged that Indian intelligence agencies hatched a conspiracy to ruin Trudeau’s visit and brand him as a supporter of Sikh separatists.<\/p>\n

Trudeau got no help at home, however. For the second consecutive day, opposition parties roasted him for his insistence that the official \u2014 revealed by the Conservatives to be the prime minister’s national security adviser, Daniel Jean \u2014 is a member of the professional, non-partisan public service whose advice should be respected and believed.<\/p>\n

They accused Trudeau of provoking a diplomatic crisis with India in a desperate bid to deflect blame for his trouble-plagued, eight-day tour of the country, which hit bottom with the revelation that a convicted attempted murderer and one-time Sikh separatist extremist had been invited to two events with the prime minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has never been a government, Liberal or Conservative, who has used a national security official to clean up an embarrassing mess that was self-inflicted by this prime minister,\u201d Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere said Trudeau has managed to make a \u201cbotched\u201d trip even worse by supporting the sabotage theory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs the prime minister trying to create an international diplomatic crisis?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

Jaspal Atwal \u2014 a B.C. Sikh convicted of trying to kill an Indian cabinet minister in 1986 \u2014 attended a reception in Mumbai, where he was photographed with Trudeau’s wife. An invitation to a later reception in New Delhi was rescinded as soon as news broke that Atwal was on the guest list.<\/p>\n

In a background briefing arranged by the Prime Minister’s Office in the midst of the furor over the invitations, Jean suggested Atwal’s presence was arranged by factions within the Indian government who want to prevent Prime Minister Narendra Modi from getting too cosy with a foreign government they believe is not committed to a united India.<\/p>\n

An official spokesman for the Indian ministry repudiated that theory Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me categorically state that the government of India, including the security agencies, had nothing to do with the presence of Jaspal Atwal at the event hosted by the Canadian high commissioner in Mumbai or the invitation issued to him for the Canadian high commissioner’s reception in New Delhi,\u201d Raveesh Kumar said in a brief statement posted on the ministry website.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that was statement was contradicted by Manjit Singh GK, head of the Delhi unit of a Sikh political party that is allied with Modi’s party.<\/p>\n

\u201cSikhs could never imagine that the PM of a country which provided them opportunities of employment and growth would be treated so badly by the Indian government,\u201d he said in a statement reported by The Times of India.<\/p>\n

According to The Times, GK agreed that Atwal had \u201cclose links\u201d with Indian diplomatic officials and that certain people within the Indian government \u201cwere behind the episode which embarrassed the Canadian PM.\u201d He pointed out that Atwal had met various officials in government agencies during a visit to India last August, including the national spokesperson for Modi’s party.<\/p>\n

In the House of Commons, Trudeau did not back down on his support for Jean, whom he described as \u201ca distinguished public servant who’s served governments, regardless of their political stripe, for over 35 years.\u201d He said the previous Conservative government \u201cso valued Mr. Jean’s service\u201d that it chose him to represent\u00a0Canada\u00a0in a speech to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Conservatives, whom he accused of politicizing the public service at every opportunity, Trudeau asserted that his Liberal government respects and appreciates the work done by professional, non-partisan public servants, \u201cparticularly those in the national security and information areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they make recommendations or when they make statements to Canadians or to this government, we on this side of the House choose to believe them,\u201d he told the Commons. \u201cOn that (Conservative) side of the House, who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n

Scheer questioned how Trudeau can simultaneously blame rogue elements in the Indian government for Atwal’s presence on the trip as well as British Columbia Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, who has taken responsibility for inviting Atwal and apologized for his lack of judgment. On Tuesday, Trudeau accepted Sarai’s resignation as chair of the Liberals’ B.C. caucus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs the prime minister actually saying that (Sarai) has taken sole responsibility for a scheme concocted by the Indian government? … How can they both be true?\u201d Scheer asked.<\/p>\n

Atwal, a one-time member of a Sikh separatist group that is banned in\u00a0Canada\u00a0and India as a terrorist organization, was convicted of attempting to kill Indian cabinet minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu on Vancouver Island in 1986.<\/p>\n

He was also charged, but not convicted, in connection with a 1985 attack on Ujjal Dosanjh, a staunch opponent of the Sikh separatist movement who later became B.C. premier and a federal Liberal cabinet minister.<\/p>\n

Liberal insiders said Sarai apologized again to his fellow MPs \u2014 plenty of whom are privately appalled by Trudeau’s handling of the trip and the subsequent fallout \u2014 during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday morning. They said he’s explained to some Liberals privately that he did not know about Atwal’s conviction for attempted murder, although he was aware of the charge in the Dosanjh incident.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives chose Alberta MP Jim Eglinski to lead off their questions during Wednesday’s question period. Eglinski, a former RCMP officer, revealed he was one of the first police officers on the scene after Sidhu was shot in 1986.<\/p>\n

\u201cI helped him and his wife into the ambulance. It’s a day I’ll never forget,\u201d Eglinski said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe victims of terrorism, they have names, they have faces and they have families. To the prime minister, why would he ever meet with Jaspal Atwal?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Conservatives have proposed a motion, to be debated Thursday, calling on MPs to affirm that they value the contributions of Canadian Sikhs and Indo-Canadians to Canadian society, that they \u201ccondemn in the strongest terms all forms of terrorism, including Khalistani extremism and the glorification of any individuals who have committed acts of violence to advance the cause of an independent Khalistani state in India\u201d and that they \u201cstand with a united India.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2014 Justin Trudeau doubled down Wednesday on his support for a senior government official who suggested factions in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":154805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[47435,447,3070],"class_list":["post-154804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-atwal-affair","tag-india","tag-justin-trudeau","mauthors-joan-bryden","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}