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Notes -
Trudeau accuses India in killing of Sikh leader on Canadian soil
First of all, I want to state that my epistemic status is huh, rather an informed opinion, but I struggle to think of anyone in a better position on The Motte to discuss this, so bear with me.
India has had its share of irredentists, separatists and good old fashioned terrorists over the years. You have the Maoists still lurking in the north east, playing hot and cold with the government via their jungle boogaloo. Islamic terrorism was a serious issue in 2010s, though it's died down. There were the Tamil Tigers down south, who proved a severe PITA for a decade or so, and then the Khalistanis, who have been largely neutered in-country but find refuge in the numerous, prosperous Sikh diaspora abroad.
The last two have had the dubious distinction of getting confirmed kills on two Indian Prime Ministers (relatives to boot).
Khalistan is the supposed homeland of the Sikh peoples, largely surrounding Punjab in the west. Unable to get it during the original Partition of India, they waged a brutal war against the Indian government for decades, peaking in the 70s and 80s. There were quite a few pogroms and riots, with Hindu on Sikh violence in the rest of India, and vice versa in their population centers.
These days, the movement is moribund within India itself, most young Sikhs don't really pay it any heed, and the older aren't the demographic to go planting bombs for the large part. Sikhs are well integrated into Indian society, and haven't had that consistent friction that the Muslims have had with their Hindu co-ethnics.
Not that you'd know this abroad. Much like IRA sympathizers hanging around in New Jersey bars, the exodus of Sikhs in the 70s and 80s ossified in amber a large migrant population with a grudge to bear against the Indian government.
I'd draw a distinction between these first-wave migrants, and a more recent influx of Sikhs who are drawn more by the prospects of making it big in Canada, or the West in general, rather than any real grievance.
While Khalistan is dead in the water, it's a popular rallying cry there, with Western governments treating it with a mixture of bemused tolerance and kid-gloves for fear of pissing off the strong Sikh voting bloc. Speaking ill of them is, from what I've heard, a surefire way of losing a narrow election, but they're otherwise model citizens and nobody wants to press the issue.
Now, Modi stands accused of the shooting of this dude sometime in June, when he was shot by unidentified gunmen in the parking lot of a gurdwara in Surrey. If there's more substance to the accusation, they haven't been made public, but the heads of state have met to hash it out.
From what I can tell, Modi's response was "we didn't do it, but if it happened, he had it coming", strongly protesting the accusations while demanding Canada be less lenient in harboring terrorists.
Modi also stands accused of the assassination in Lahore of another Khalistan leader, not that anyone particularly cared at the time, and that's just the usual India-Pakistan bhai-bhai at play.
That's the gist of it, on one hand, we have the fact that India has largely refrained from extraterritorial assassinations, certainly not to the degree that the US, Russia or Israel are fond of. I struggle to think of a single example, not that I'm an expert.
On the other, who the fuck else has a motive to whack the dude? I don't think relations between India and Canada are bad enough for the latter to make entirely unfounded accusations, and they've even roped in a few other countries like the UK and US to bring diplomatic pressure to bear. The Head of Foreign Intelligence for India was kicked out from Canada, and some bloke named Oliver Sylvester was the tit to that tat.
I'd wager 50% odds that India was responsible based on the balance of evidence, and I wonder if this will be a flash in the pan that peters out when the Sikhs are mollified, or if Canada really wants to pick a fight with an otherwise neutral/positively inclined major nation.
But if you're curious, this means zilch in terms of impact on Modi's popularity of home, you think supporters of a strongman are going to be mad when he strongmans? Even the libs over at /r/India who foam at the mouth at the sight of Modi are of the opinion he had it coming.
Never really understood the pearl clutching on this matter. Litvinenko, Khashoggi, Georgi Markov and whatnot - who cares.
me, I prefer Russian government to be less able to murder people they dislike
(to the point that I approve/would approve of noticeably larger taxes to fund neutering Russia)
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Are you similarly surprised about nation states caring enough to kill separatists and terrorists abroad in the first place?
Because it's pretty much the same thing, one implies the other. The state*, in the crudest analysis, is a stationary bandit who claims ownership of a turf, a parcel of profitable land. This means maintaining the monopoly on legitimate violence within its borders, particularly mortal violence. Killing someone on the soil of another state is tantamount to diminishing that state's sovereignty; putting your dubious claim to «prey» above the state's claim to its legitimacy in its own domain, as if some ape's body moving around projects the qualitatively prioritized extension of yours; it is not so different in its corrosive effect from a direct attack on a local citizen, from using intimidation to intervene in local politics, indeed from supporting separatism. States, of course, exist in the condition of anarchy where might makes right and yadda yadda [realpolitik edgelording], but when such act is performed by «normal» states, ie bandits who profess to abide by some semblance of a code commonly agreed upon, as opposed to disreputable rogue shitholes with poor impulse control (or, I suppose, invincible Hegemonies), the exposure leads to apologia and compensation for damages – because it is a grave attack, even if nobody of the attacked state suffers directly.
*One of the sad things in learning languages is thoughtlessly swallowing words as one to one correspondences without pondering their etymologies and connotations, indelibly relative and path-dependent positions in the web of meaning, I believe. (This is not so much an endorsement of Sapir-Whorf as a weaker claim that different peoples use different ways to speak of the same things, same ways to speak of different things, and confuse this in translation). For example, in English, the token for «state» as in a nation/polity/unified territory is shared with an abstract, impersonal, elementary logical notion of a mode of operation maintained over some set: «the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time», the dictionary says. Hence, Balaji's «network state» is not an absurdity, «failed state» is a compact expression of a rather profound idea, and «state as a stationary bandit» might sound edgier than it should.
In Russian, however, the token for state-abstract is состояние, «condition» (itself different from условие which corresponds to a condition as in «term»), while state-nation is Государство. Государь means «sovereign» or «Prince». So, to a Russian ear, all states are principalities, dominions of an implied specific prince or equivalent; perhaps a conspiracy, at least a Deep State or a Cathedral, but not anything less, not anything that simply exists without expressing some de facto agent's coherent will.
As the honorary Russian Brodsky had uttered through the character of Marcus Valerius Martialis: «Surely, his view is barbaric, but yet candid».
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You’re going to have to be more specific.
Disliking a government killing its own citizens is pretty normal. I’d say it ought to be the default reaction. Especially in the US, where speech protections are are relatively big part of the cultural mythos.
Getting worked up enough to demand severing diplomatic ties, sanctions, whatever? Now that’s a bit weird. I’m inclined to think most people holding rallies for Khashoggi or whatever were already invested in Saudi politics. If so, caring about a visible, lurid murder is…back to being normal.
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The US exercises more control over Canadian and Mexican foreign policy than it does of any other nation (including its European and Asian allies). If an updated Monroe Doctrine covers relations with Central and South America (and the Caribbean), the situation for Canada and Mexico is even more strict. The US essentially imposes its will, a quasi-official form of suzerainty, on these two countries. An example - the US no-fly list is enforced across all of North America, if the US decides you can't leave the country, you can't travel to Canada or Mexico and fly from there to anywhere else, you're banned. And relations with Canada are even closer than with Mexico, there aren't AMLO-type figures who openly and strongly critique American liberals in mainstream Canadian politics. The US forced Canada to arrest Meng Wanzhou, even though it resulted in innocent Canadians being imprisoned in China. That's the level of influence, both by treaty partnership and unspoken control.
So a foreign assassination on Canadian soil is a big deal. The US and its immediate sphere is the one place where foreign assassinations are extremely rare, not because they're technically impossible (weapons are much easier to acquire, the southern border can be easily traversed stealthily, US domestic intelligence is not much more competent than that of the UK or France or Germany), but out of fear. The Russians, Turks, Iranians, Israelis, Saudis will assassinate political enemies in any other corner of the world except North America (the CIA claims to have foiled alleged IRGC 'plots' against some Americans, but it's very hard to believe these got far).
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