The RCMP and Vancouver police are investigating threats against Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh posted on a Facebook page labelled “Ujjal Dosanjh is a Sikh Traitor.”
The most menacing posting urges, “someone shoot him — ASAP.”
The writer, who identifies himself as Bobby Grewal of London, England, also makes derogatory comments about the Vancouver South MP’s family.
RCMP Insp. Paul Richards, who heads the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, said the Facebook comments are being taken very seriously.
“We are aware of them and we are going to look into them,” Richards said. “Obviously we take that very, very seriously.”
The Facebook page , still online at 8 p.m. on Thursday, was started this week, days after Dosanjh criticized violent imagery in last Saturday’s Vaisakhi parade in Surrey and veiled threats made by an organizer last week.
A float at the parade contained images glorifying leaders of banned terrorist organizations.
Dosanjh said he was disturbed by the online threats.
“The comments I have seen are violent and hateful. The intentions are clearly sinister. The imagery expressed ruthlessness and violence clothed in searing hate,” Dosanjh said Thursday.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were 189 members on the Facebook page, including someone giving the thumbs-up sign for the comment that Dosanjh should be shot.
Not only has there been extremist imagery in B.C., but three clashes at Ontario Sikh temples this month in which police have been called in and some people wounded.
“Unless we wake up and confront this horrific development among a minority of Sikhs and other diasporas fighting similarly over things foreign, a hundred years from now we may have a fragmented Canada,” Dosanjh said.
“I worry about the fabric and values of Canada being irreparably damaged. I am fighting for our future generations.”
Last week, Dasmesh Darbar temple director Inderjit Singh Bains said on radio that neither Dosanjh nor Liberal MLA Dave Hayer were invited to the public parade and that if they did come, they should bring their own security.
The temple issued a statement Wednesday saying the temple wanted to “apologize to the Canadian community for the misconstrued statements made by Inderjit Bains during a press conference” last week.
The statement did not mention Dosanjh or Hayer by name, nor were either contacted directly by anyone from the temple.
Both men have regularly spoken out against the extremists, including those in the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group believed to be behind the 1985 Air India bombing.
Dosanjh has been threatened several times in recent years — always after public statements condemning extremism. He was beaten with a lead pipe in February 1985 by a suspected member of the now-banned International Sikh Youth Federation.
Richards said INSET has already done some successful investigations involving Facebook.
And he said police in B.C. will work with international partners if necessary to investigate the Facebook page.
“Facebook is a global kind of social networking. But that’s not to say that it ties our hands. It is a whole aspect to different investigations and we certainly do everything we can to pursue anything that relates to any kind of extremist talk,” Richards said.
“If there are threats against anybody here in Canada and the threat was made originating in the United States or the U.K. or anywhere, then we work with the police of that jurisdiction to determine if an offence has taken place. We just have to do it cooperatively.”
He said it is still rare that a member of Parliament or other elected official is threatened in Canada.
“It doesn’t happen often and speaks to the gravity of it obviously,” he said.
Dosanjh said it is particularly disturbing that the Facebook page seems to be the creation of young Canadian-born Sikhs.
“It is quite clear that many young minds born or raised here have been completely trained in hate and violence,” he said.
The page administrator Avtar Kanda claims that Dosanjh “used his Sikh roots to get elected in Vancouver, but then betrayed his own people.”
“This piece of s--- is a scumbag traitor and an insult to the Sikh religion,” Kanda said.
Another poster calling himself Sukhi Loco Singh said: “Do not spare anyone who insults guru ji-shaheed sent jarnail Singh ji Khalsa bhindranwale.”
Bhindranwale, the Sikh separatist leader killed in June 1984 when the Golden Temple was raided by the Indian Army, was one of those depicted as a martyr on the controversial float Saturday.
One commenter called Ranjha Singh Khalsa said on his linked page that Punjabis must “do everything to the extreme, but do it smart you got me?”
“Secondly there is too much nonsense out there that must be stopped; if there are any issues please let me know. I will help. Secrets will be kept. I need not say more. Consider me. Mastermind. All problems shall be solved....And its better I fix the issue than anyone else,” Khalsa said.
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Onl...832/story.html 
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