Sikh activism and counter-terrorism are at the crosshairs as the United Kingdom increasingly targets Sikh activists under creative state-sanctioned methods of surveillance and criminalisation, writes Shamsher Singh for Baaz News.
Most recently, Sikh Youth UK (SYUK) was placed on trial after the West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) claimed that SYUK was “misleading the Charities Commission.” However, SYUK is not a registered charity, despite being treated, audited, and criminalised as one.
This trial and criminalisation of SYUK is a warning to all grassroots, community, religious, and other unapologetically panthic organisations about the mechanisms and strategies being deployed against Sikh activists.
To understand the trial against SYUK, we must contextualise it within the eight years of collusion and intelligence exchange between the Indian and UK governments, Jagtar Singh’s case, and the failed extradition of the West Midlands 3.
The collusion of the UK establishment and the Indian state is long-standing and documented in the 2017 report ‘Sacrifcing Sikhs’. To see it in context is to start to understand what the trial of SYUK really is: a furtherance of a counter-terrorism agenda to disrupt and discredit Sikh activism in the UK.
Read more on Baaz News.
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