Around 100 members of the local Sikh community staged a protest in front of the Lahore Press Club on Monday to mark the Golden Temple killings by the Indian Army in Amritsar on June 6, 1984. The protesters also attended services at various gurdwaras.
The protesters regretted that 27 years after the tragedy, they had not received justice. The anniversary of Operation Blue Star brought back hurtful memories of the military brutality. Sardar Mastan Singh told The Express Tribune that Sikhs had faced torture at various stages from the time of the Indo-Pak partition to the 1984 sacrilege of their shrine by the Indian forces.
“On this day, the Indian Military forces brutally attacked the central Sikh shrine, Shri Darbar Sahib, also called the Golden Temple. Thousands of innocent Sikhs were killed at the time,” he said. He said that the Pakistani Sikhs wanted justice for the massacre.
Sardar Sham Singh, the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president, told The Tribune that on behalf of around 12,000 Sikhs living in Pakistan, the committee demanded the Indian government to form an independent commission to probe the matter. He said that since 1984 at least 11 judicial commissions had been appointed, but all had failed to do the job.
Writer Sardar Kalyan Singh recalled that former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi had ordered Operation Blue Star that lasted from June 3 to June 6, 1984.
“Militarily successful, the operation is considered a political disaster,” he said. He said that the revenge for the desecration of the Sikh shrine was pledged by many in the community, and eventually resulted in the assassination of Gandhi by two of her bodyguards. “It was followed by brutal attacks on Sikhs in which thousands more were killed, burnt alive and raped.”
Published in The Express Tribune, June 7th, 2011.
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