UK PM David Cameron Asked to Establish Public Inquiry into 1984 Sikh Massacre by Journalist Union

PM David Cameron
PM David Cameron

In an unprecedented move, the National Union of Journalist (NUJ) has called on the British Prime Minister (PM) David Cameron to establish a full public inquiry into all the documents, and events relating to India, covering the whole of 1984.

For weeks now, British organizations and personalities have been calling upon the British PM to establish a full public inquiry into 1984, the NUJ joins a long list of organizations which include National Union of Students (NUS).

At the union’s delegate meeting in Eastbourne delegates unanimously accepted a motion proposed by Parvinder Singh of NUJ book branch and author of 1984 Sikhs’ Kristallnacht, and seconded by Laura James of the London magazine branch.

The motion noted the Cabinet Secretary’s internal inquiry, tabled in the House of Commons on February 4, 2014, stating that Margaret Thatcher’s government agreed that the UK would provide military assistance in the form of UK Special Air Service (SAS) advice in planning the assault by Indian forces on the Sikhs’ Golden Temple in Amritsar, which resulted in the death of thousands of people.

Parvinder Singh, while speaking about this catastrophe at NUJ conference, added the Cabinet Secretary’s recent internal inquiry had been “too narrow in scope and time frame, many questions remain unanswered, despite PM Cameron’s statement that his government would be transparent on the issue.”

In the subsequent anti-Sikh pogroms of November 1984, the Conservative government “chose to maintain close relations with India in order not to jeopardize billions of pounds of commercial contracts, despite evidence that leading members of India’s ruling Congress Party were instrumental in the massacres,” added Singh, whose family in Delhi narrowly survived the 1984 genocide.

The delegates commended the work of journalist Phil Miller, who discovered the initial documents at the National Archives in Kew. Information about India’s relations with Britain have been kept secret, and they have not been revealed to parliament or the public for 30 years. Not all of the information and documents have been released.

1 COMMENT

  1. In the mean time they employ hundreds of people to comb through all related documents and destroy all incriminating ones and when everything is ok there will be an independent inquiry… lol what a joke.

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