Good evening. I'm legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada. We are a non-profit human rights organization established in 1984 with a mandate to promote and protect the interests of Canadian Sikhs as well as to promote and advocate for the protection of human rights of all individuals, regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, and social and economic status.
Our traditional understanding of refugees is that they are persons who have fled their homes for fear of persecution and are seeking asylum outside their home countries, but what happens when a group faces terror and persecution and is unable to escape its home country? What becomes of those people? This scenario describes the situation of Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, and I'm grateful that the committee is taking the time to look into this pressing issue.
By way of background, Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan currently face an unliveable situation in many parts. The Sikh and Hindu communities that have lived in Afghanistan for centuries now have approximately 2,000 people. Prior to 1992, their population numbered approximately 200,000.
My experience with Afghan Sikhs began in November 2014, when I received a desperate series of messages from a remote Afghan Sikh community that was facing imminent danger. Their businesses had been publicly boycotted and stoned. Since then, I've come to meet and become friends with members of this community who have now, in some numbers, with great difficulty, managed to flee to India, with assistance.
Sikhs in Afghanistan find themselves oppressed in almost every facet of life. They're unable to leave their homes freely for fear of attack and harassment. Sikhs are unable to find employment or to freely operate their businesses. Sikh children are unable to attend school for fear of harassment, physical attack, and pressure to convert. Sikh women are unable to leave their homes unaccompanied and must wear the burka. Girls are routinely married by the age of 16, because families fear that they may be kidnapped, raped, and forcibly converted and married if they don't marry earlier. Sikhs and Hindus are unable to respectfully cremate their dead, as funeral processions are often stoned and forbidden from proceeding. Funerals must be held clandestinely. Land that Sikhs and Hindus have lawfully owned for centuries has been occupied. Police and government officials are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. As a result, large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus live collectively in gurdwaras.
Many Afghan Sikhs and Hindus are also forced to pay the jeziah, which is a monthly tax on non-Muslims extorted by the Taliban or other extremist elements, or face the imminent threat of death.
Afghan Sikhs and Hindus are by all definitions communities under siege and in serious danger. As conditions worsen, travel for Afghan Sikhs has become increasingly difficult, because Sikhs are so visible due to their articles of faith. They are accosted on the street and subject to random searches by the police, including the forcible removal of the turban to humiliate them.
Just by way of an anecdote, I know an Afghan Sikh who told me that he was once travelling on a bus that broke down, and he was almost lynched by his fellow passengers, who blamed him for incurring bad luck on them for not being of the correct faith.
Sikhs who do travel do so in small groups or face being kidnapped.
With respect to Sikhs right now on the ground, there are Sikh communities centred in three main areas: Kabul, Jalalabad, and Ghazni. There are also some businesses operated by members in smaller towns, but by and large, those who are in smaller communities have now largely moved to cities or have left Afghanistan. The Sikhs and Hindus who remain in Afghanistan are mostly the vulnerable who are unable to move due to a lack of financial resources. These include lone female caregivers and their children, whose male family members have been lost or killed in conflicts. The community also includes elders who have been stranded by children who fled abroad during previous conflicts.
With respect to finding solutions, gauging the true situation of Sikhs and Hindus in the various parts of Afghanistan poses a challenge in itself, as members of the community are distrustful of outsiders and fear retribution and are therefore reluctant to speak openly about their circumstances. Afghan Sikhs who leave Afghanistan are often reluctant to even provide their names, as they fear that family members remaining behind may be targeted for kidnapping and extortion. That's not an unfounded fear, given the story of Kulraj Singh, a 22-year-old Afghan Sikh who came forward in September 2015 with a story of having spent 40 days in captivity facing torture and forcible conversion. He was only freed after the local Sikhs paid a ransom of 500,000 rupees.
The relocation of Sikhs and Hindus within Afghanistan is also not a viable option. No area in Afghanistan is hospitable to these communities or allows them to freely practise their faith. Furthermore, as visible targets due to their articles of faith, Afghan Sikhs face significant travel risks in any internal flight option in the form of IEDs, roadside attacks, kidnappings, summary execution, etc.
Members of the Afghan government have proposed creating a township specifically for Sikhs and Hindus and relocating all members of these communities there. The idea, as you can appreciate, is deeply flawed and disturbing, as it amounts to forced relocation into what is a proposed ghetto and what would be an easy target for extremists.
Fleeing to neighbouring states is also not an option for Sikh and Hindu religious minorities. Afghan Sikh and Hindu refugees who have fled to neighbouring Pakistan and India have for decades faced discrimination as minorities and have been systematically denied access to health care, education for their children, and long-term legal status.
Without the possibility of meaningful local integration or the prospect of voluntary return to a decreasingly stable country, permanent resettlement of Afghan minority asylum seekers into third countries is the only viable long-term durable solution. We would suggest that Hindu and Sikh communities in Afghanistan be surveyed by NGOs that they can trust to determine what supports they can be provided with, whether material, security, political, or otherwise. These may be able to allow some of them to remain in their country, which they have called home for centuries.
When these communities demonstrate an inability to exercise basic human rights or face overwhelming persecution and threat, Canada has a humanitarian obligation to assist them in their evacuation and resettlement. Canada has previously directly admitted persons in refugee-like situations without recognition as convention refugees under the source country class, which was eliminated in 2011. Other countries, recognizing the severity of human rights crises, have also accepted and protected asylum seekers directly from their homes. In 2015 Canada also temporarily waived refugee status recognition document requirements for sponsored refugees from Syria and Iraq.
Amongst Canadian Sikhs, there is a growing enthusiasm to help bring these suffering members of the Afghan Sikh and Hindu community to Canada. This project was championed by my late friend Manmeet Singh Bhullar, who dedicated himself selflessly in the final months of his life to see that Afghan Sikhs and Hindus who were most vulnerable could flee to safety. Despite the serious challenge I outlined earlier, efforts are ongoing to find a way to take his mission forward.
Regarding the challenges with respect to mobility and travel, we submit that an expedited or waived procedure should be established for Afghan Sikhs and Hindu refugees.