Of foreign doctors and terrorist cousins

By now, most of you should be familiar with the case involving Dr Haneef in Queensland. If not, here's a quick recap:

Bungled terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow (no one injured and 1 terrorist dies when his vehicle goes up in flames with him in it). Many of those involved identified as Muslim Indian-born foreign doctors, practicing in the UK. One of the suspects had a cousin practicing as a doctor in Brisbane (Dr Haneef, also Indian-born, having moved from the UK a few months ago), who was caught while trying to leave the country on a one-way ticket. Various claims made by the police to justify the arrest. Charges laid and then later dropped due to lack of evidence. Turns out, all Dr Haneef had done was give his terrorist cousin his UK SIM card when he was leaving the UK (almost a year before the terrorist activity) because he had no use for it once he left the country. The SIM card was not used in the attacks. Dr Haneef subsequently released from custody but has had his work visa cancelled (due to his failing the "character test"), so is unable to continue working the Australia.

Now, I'm writing this because I am a foreign doctor (well, sort of. I'm New Zealand-trained but born in Malaysia). Also, I had a terrorist cousin. His name was Kalwant Singh Sidhu-Brar (Sidhu-Brar being my real surname, some people prefer to just use Brar - [the Brar clan is a subset of the Sidhu clan]). Some newspapers referred to him as Kalwant Singh Gumti (Gumti being the name of his [and my ancestral] village in the Punjab). He was a Sikh militant, involved in the armed uprising against the Indian government in the quest for a separate Sikh state called Khalistan in the 1980's and early 90's. His paternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather were brothers (my grandparents on both sides of the family migrated to what was then British Malaya, so I'm 3rd generation Malaysian).

Before I tell you his story, let me just say that having read into the background of the Sikh separatist movement, and the events that provoked a demand for a separate state (they were essentially being screwed by the Indian central goverment) I support their motives but not their methods. Depending on your point of view, they are either freedom-fighters or terrorists. I tend to favour the latter term, based on the fact that many innocent Hindu civilians were gunned down in order to provoke the central Indian government. That's not to say I'm absolving the other side either - many Sikh youth who were picked up for questioning ended up dead after police torture (some for just being seen talking to a known militant).

On a quick side-note, I hate the way the word "terrorist" is bandied about these days. After Sept 11, everyone and their grandmother is a terrorist as long as it suits American interests. Why weren't the Irish Republican Army ever called terrorists by the American media? Was it because of the huge Irish Catholic immigrant population the US that provided moral (and some monetary) support? The same with the "freedom-fighters" in Kashmir not usually referred to as terrorists so as to not offend Pakistani sentiments, with Pakistan of course being central to America's "war on terror" (or as Borat so aptly put it, "war of terror")

Anyway, this story starts in August 1986, when General (retd) A. S. Vaidya, Chief of the Army Staff at the time of operation Blue Star, was shot dead in Pune by two Sikh assailants. If you don't know what Operation Blue Star is, go Google it or search on Wikipedia (and while you're there, look up Indira Gandhi's assasination and the subsequent anti-Sikh riots). Then, in August 1991, the Indian Ambassador to Romania Julio Ribeiro (who also happened to be the ex-Director General of Police in Punjab) was seriously wounded in Bucharest. The assailants in both cases were eventually captured and in the former case, sentenced to death.

In October 1991, the Romanian charge d'affaires in New Delhi, Liviu Radu, was kidnapped by four armed men as he drove to his office. The Khalistan Liberation Force and 3 other militant Sikh separatist groups jointly claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. My cousin was involved in the planning, if not the execution, of the kidnapping. I remember reading his name in the newspaper when I was young after this incident (and Dad pointing it out to me that we were related). They demanded the release of Sikhs facing the death sentence for the assasination of Vaidya. A Romanian official was chosen due to the fact that Ribeiro was posted to Romania, hoping that it would set off a diplomatic row between the 2 countries. The problem was though, that no one gave a rat's arse about some Romanian official in India and there was barely any follow-up media coverage internationally. He was eventually released unharmed after 48 (some sources say 23) days unharmed, with none of the demands met.

One of the men on death row was a close personal friend of my cousin. My cousin himself had gone underground prior to this, and was all set up to escape and live overseas (all the main funding came from sympathetic Sikhs based mainly in Canada and the UK) until he heard about his friend's situation. After the Romanian official was released, my cousin was gunned down in a police shootout (the police commonly manufactured these shootouts after torturing suspects to death, although this was not the case in this instance).

So there you go, a few similarities between Dr Haneef and myself. If Australia ever comes up with an immigration form asking "Do you or did you have any family members engaged in terrorist activity?", what do I tick?

References:
The Illustrated History Of The Sikhs - Khushwant Singh, Oxford University Press, 2006.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974111,00.html
http://www.sikhsentinel.com/sikhsentinel0309/harpalsingh1.htm
http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/27/stories/2007092756051200.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/feb/05inter.htm