Australian foreign minister accuses India of targeting Sikh activists in Canada

Australia’s foreign minister said Tuesday she raised allegations with her Indian counterpart that India has targeted Sikh activists in Canada.Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she discussed the Canadian allegations with Indian Foreign Minister S.Jaishankar while he was in the Australian capital, Canberra.India has denied Canada’s allegation that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered the targeting of Sikh activists inside Canada.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public last with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home.

They said top Indian officials were then passing that information along to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil.The United States Justice Department announced criminal charges in mid-October against an Indian government employee in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.The Justice Department said Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in an alleged planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.Wong said her message to the Sikh community was that people have a right to be safe and respected in Australia, regardless of who they are.“We’ve made clear our concerns about the allegations under investigation.

We’ve said that we respect Canada’s judicial process,” Wong said at a news conference with Jaishankar.“We convey our views to India as you would expect us to do and we have a principled position in relation to matters such as the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary and also...