The members of Punjabi Press Club of British Columbia (PPCBC) unanimously condemned the continued incarceration of the journalist and author under inhuman conditions in the Indian jail.
Gautam Navlakha was arrested on trumped up charges in April 2020 and is currently lodged in jail near Mumbai. His only crime is daring to question the powerful and always standing up for the minorities and the oppressed. He was instrumental behind Who are the guilty?, the first authentic field report on Sikh Genocide of 1984 that revealed the complicity of the Indian establishment in one of the worst crimes against humanity.
In spite of health issues and the danger of the pandemic in prisons, he is not being released on compassionate grounds.
On Tuesday, November 9, the PPCBC passed a motion during its monthly meeting in Surrey asking for the immediate release of Navlakha and expressed its solidarity with him.
The development comes close to the 37th anniversary of the state sponsored massacre of the Sikhs in the first week of November, 1984. Navlakha, who has been writing columns for NewsClick and Economic and Political Weekly is associated with People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), which published a report on the pogroms in partnership with People’s Union for Civil Liberties.
On October 31, Vancouver-based Radical Desi held a rally outside the Indian Visa and Passport Application Center in Surrey to protest against his continued detention.
