A terrible legacy
Twenty-five years later, the Air India victims’ families still grieve, and Sikh radicalism continues to flourish in Canada
By David B. Harris,
Ottawa Citizen Special June 7, 2010
Traduction vers le francais cliquez [ ICI ]
A body is carried from a helicopter at Cork airport, Ireland, following the June 23, 1985, bombing of Air India flight 182 from Montreal. Townsfolk on the coast threw themselves into determined but fruitless seaborne rescue efforts, helped in the traumatizing retrieval of remains, and opened homes to grieving victims’ relatives.
Turmoil and tragedy swept this quiet southern Irish village a quarter-century ago, as fate — and Canadian-made terrorism — made it part of the catastrophe that was the June 23, 1985 Air India airliner bombing. Townsfolk here and farther afield threw themselves into determined but fruitless seaborne rescue efforts, helped in the traumatizing retrieval of remains, opened homes to grieving victims’ relatives and witnessed the erecting of a monument to the memory of the 329 souls of Flight 182.
Soon, ceremonies here will mark the 25th anniversary of a mass murder that was the world’s greatest aviation-terrorism disaster until 9/11. And soon, all of this will be revisited in the long-awaited final report of Mr. Justice John C. Major’s federal Air India Inquiry.
Throughout the inquiry, I have served as legal counsel to an official inquiry intervener organization, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies.
Despite three decades in intelligence and counterterrorism affairs, I was not fully prepared for the emotions and information in the public evidence, and behind the scenes. The experience has deepened my concerns about Canada’s security.
Long before the inquiry hearings began, I spoke to many survivors of those lost. You learn quickly, in counterterrorism, that people who outlive terror victims often pay with a lifetime’s grief and disadvantage: permanent psychological trauma, damaged health, economic loss and, frequently — especially for young dependents — a lack of education, and possibly even poverty and addiction. Along with survivors’ courage and grit, these are the legacies of the Air India bombing.
Family members’ commission testimony revealed some of the gut-wrenching story.
There was the gentle Sikh man, 20 years on, his face still grey with grief, a life utterly ruined by his wife’s death. He said he was torn apart by the conviction that he, a traditional product of the Old Country, lacked the skills to properly feed and nurture his now-adult children, thus extending their tragedy. He bore the additional pain of knowing that Canadian-based coreligionists had put the bomb on board.
There was the woman who was so shattered by the deaths of her husband and daughter, that she could not grieve — until, in a shuddering twist, her son escaped a burning aircraft many years later at Pearson International Airport. The young man was safe, so her endless crying puzzled bystanders: “They didn’t know I wasn’t crying for the son who made it, but for the daughter who didn’t. For the first time in 20 years I mourned the death of my daughter and cried for her.”
Unfortunately, fears of “another Air India” are not without foundation. After 1985, Canadian Sikhs courageously and quite successfully fought back against the radicals. However, the federal government’s laissez-faire approach to such challenges and its world-beating per capita immigration inflows, mean that Canada is fast becoming an international headquarters of resurgent Sikh radicalism.
So, while India itself seems no longer to have significant Sikh-radical problems, Canada now appears to.
Moderate Sikhs complain of portraits of suspected Air India killers as “martyrs” in some gudwaras and parades. Sikh parliamentarians complain about threats from hardliners. Others worry, especially in British Columbia, that vote-seeking municipal politicians are funding radical schools.
Meanwhile, journalists exercising their Charter right to expose all this are silenced by “libel lawfare,” defamation lawsuits aimed at preventing the media from exposing the growing hazard.
Against this backdrop, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — himself a Sikh — was recently reduced to petitioning Canada’s government for assurances that it is monitoring Canadian-based extremists. Canada is developing a reputation as a magnet, home and haven for extremists.
So what should we hope to find in the forthcoming Air India Inquiry recommendations? Some straight talk, for starters.
The commission will doubtless note the security and intelligence interagency problems that dogged the pre-bombing and early post-attack investigative phases, including failure to share and store sensitive evidence. But these weaknesses have been generally addressed in the generation since the assault.
The final report should embrace the Senate national security committee’s continual warnings that Canadian airports and airliners are insufficiently secure against ground-based access by terrorists to aircraft baggage holds and other compartments.
The commission should call for an assessment of Sikh radicalism, with the hope of blocking radicals from government funding and outreach, and reinforce moderates. We need no repetition of disgraceful RCMP “community outreach” events like the recent one in B.C. that featured an Islamist scholar known for his extremist, shariah-based views justifying violence against gays.
Consideration should be given to outlawing the glorifying of terrorism and terrorist organizations. Special tax status should be withheld from houses of worship connected to this behaviour. Members of Parliament and other politicians knowingly playing with terror fronts, should face parliamentary processes established for the impeaching and removal of such people from office. Political, business, academic, religious and other community leaders must understand that they betray Canadians’ security when granting front groups credibility by engaging them.
Public debate is crucial to counterradicalism awareness and relevant public policy development. Tort law should be modified so that judges can dismiss, early in proceedings, libel-lawfare lawsuits aimed at silencing media and blinding citizens to what is happening in their backyard. Organizations such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Amnesty International must end their silence, and speak out for journalists and free speech defenders facing predatory legal siege.
The government should cut Canada’s unconscionably-high immigration levels down to economically sane numbers that will no longer be beyond officials’ capacity to screen for extremism.
Here in Ahakista and County Cork, they say the flowers so lovingly tended around the imposing dark stone Air India monument, were chosen to blossom on the anniversary of the slaughter. Let us hope that the next blooming of these remembrances will bring the commemoration that truly counts: action.
One Air India is enough.
David B. Harris is a lawyer and director of the terrorism program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc. He was an intervener’s counsel in the Air India Inquiry, and was a CSIS senior manager in 1988-’90.
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