What If My Dad Was White?

[D Kaur]

http://indyblogs.typepad.com/independent/2...lli-1.html#more

Hi All,

Ravi Bhenji has asked for our help, can we all please post a comment, and also write to our MP's to try an get this some real coverage in the media? If Gillian Gibbons can be realeased with Govt intervention, surely something can be done in this case.

Lets try and get the awareness on this case up.

Thank you

[JustME]

Pehnj that was a fantasic and thought provoking article and thank u very much for sahring...............guru kirpa i signed the petition and sangat jio banti to all sign the petition to promote the unfortunate inequality of treatment against british asians in such cases as Sujit pehnjee

[Mista Singh]

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

I cant see a link to the petition on the blog?

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

[JustME]

waheguruuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Plz sign the petition and show ur support, heres the link veer jee

http://www.petitiononline.com/surjit/petition.html

basically this is a petition started by Surjit Athwal's (the woman who was strangled in India, a plan orchestated by her Husband and Mother In Law) Brother, about how brithish murders aroad are not given equal consideration to, say british, white citizens for crimes abroad.........as the actual killer of Surjit Athwal is still alive and well in India and yet the british goernment are dragging their heals about it...........

heres the link to the aticles and also the article in full:

http://indyblogs.typepad.com/independent/2...if-gillian.html

Minority Report: What if Gillian Gibbons wasn't white?

Jerome Taylor

The release of Gillian Gibbons must be a huge relief for her family in Liverpool and is a stunning example of what can be achieved with a bit of concerted diplomacy. Since her arrest on 25 November the UK government appeared to pull out all the stops to win her freedom. But would they have done the same if Mrs Gibbons was not white?

That may seem like an overly controversial question to ask but not if you're Jagdeesh Singh. Jagdeesh's sister Surjit Athwal went missing in 1998 during a trip to the Indian Panjab with her in-laws and was never seen again. Nine years later, after an excruciatingly frustrating campaign by Surjit's family who refused to let her become 'just another missing British Asian' and some impressive police work, Surjit's husband and his 70-year-old mother were eventually convicted of her murder.

I stayed in contact with Jagdeesh and his family throughout the trial of his sister's murderers and one of the issues he kept coming back to was what he believed to be the glaring disparity between how the government acts when a white British subject gets into trouble abroad compared to when someone non-white does.

When British hostess Lucie Blackman went missing in Tokyo in 2000, or when backpacker Kirsty Jones was found dead in Thailand the same year, the British government moved within days at a ministerial level to ensure the Japanese and Thai governments did everything they could to find their killers.

Four years after Surjit went missing Jagdeesh was still trying to have his letters to the Foreign Office answered, no representations had been made to the Indian authorities on the family's behalf and, to this day, the man suspected of actually strangling Surjit (the police know his name) remains free to farm his land in the Panjab.

Another campaigner highlighting this perceived disparity is Diana Nammi, from the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation. Operating out of a cramped office in the East End her small group of volunteers specialise in trying to halt the phenomenon of so-called "honour killings". She has been vocally critical of the government's perceived lack of desire to pursue people who have committed honour killings and then fled abroad. Two men suspected by the UK police of killing Kurdish woman Banaz Mahmod, for instance, have avoided trial because they fled to Iraqi Kurdistan (again the police know who they are).

Jagdeesh has now created an online petition calling on the UK government to do everything in its power to catch the remaining killers of Surjit Athwal and Banaz Mahmod.

Part of the blame of course must lie with the media. When a young, bright, intelligent British woman from an Asian family goes missing, or when the killers of a Kurdish woman get off scot-free, it barely makes the local pages. When a white girl disappears abroad it's front page news.

Put simply, had there not been such a frenzy of column inches when Lucie Blackman was murdered or when Gillian Gibbon was arrested then the government would not have been under such pressure to do something about it.

Jagdeesh and Diana's campaigns force us to ask some tough questions however uncomfortable those questions might be. Questions such as: does our government, or we as a society, treat and view all British subjects equally when things go wrong abroad? Or perhaps even: if Gillian Gibbons wasn't white, would she be free right now?

[chatanga]

Below is blog comments of Jerome Taylor who has helped in highlighting the plight of Paramjeet Singh Dhadhi, who is currently detained in Punjab by police on bogus charges. Jerome is a journalist for The Independent who ran a story on Paramjeet Singh Dhadhi in May 2007. On 23rd December it will be 1 year from the day he was arrested. So far, the Foreign Office has done nothing to help Dhadhi, yet for Gillian Gibbons they were active very quickly. Please go to blog below and post your comments in support for chnage with foriegn policy and show your support to Paramjeet Singh Dhadhi's campaign.

http://indyblogs.typepad.com/independent/2...if-gilli-1.html

Minority Report: What if Gillian Gibbons wasn't white? Part II

By Jerome Taylor

Yesterday I wrote a blog asking the question: had British school teacher Gillian Gibbons not been white, would she have been afforded the same concerted diplomatic assistance that led to her early release? It's an uncomfortable question but one that needs to be asked.

In response to that piece, a woman who I had interviewed a year ago got back in contact to remind me of the plight of her British father who is currently in an Indian prison on trumped up charges and, she believes, has been largely ignored by the British government.

Unlike Gillian Gibbons who (quite rightly) was afforded all the diplomatic assistance Britain could muster following her farcical arrest, Paramjit Singh still languishes in a jail in the Indian Panjab a year after he was picked up by Indian police.

The retired foundry worker from Wolverhampton was arrested in December last year on spurious charges that he was planning to make bombs and disrupt local elections that were due to take place the following month. Investigations by human rights campaigners and local reporters in the region have shown the evidence is seriously flawed, if it has any basis at all.

A much-admired folk singer in the British Sikh community, Paramjit Singh was a vocal critic of human rights abuses carried out against Sikh activists in the Panjab, one of the few states in India where some human rights groups are still banned from conducting research.

He had been on holiday in India with his wife Balvinder (pictured above) in order to build a holiday home near the family's ancestral village. But he had also clearly made some political enemies who were able to engineer his now seemingly endless incarceration - something that is unfortunately all to easy to do in the more isolated backwaters of India.

Despite being arrested on 23 December, Paramjit Singh was not visited by British officials for seven days, even though his arrest dominated Panjabi media over the Christmas period and allegations of torture were made by Mr Singh and his other men who were arrested with him.

When I met his family in March they refrained from being too critical of the Foreign Office because they were hopeful that what they thought was a simple misunderstanding could be sorted out with a few firm words in Delhi's ear from London. But nine months on they are desperate and increasingly angry at how little has been done to try and free a British national arrested abroad on spurious charges.

"I hate to say it," his daughter wrote to me yesterday, "but if my dad was white I believe he'd be home now."

So is the government racist in the way it deals with British nationals who get into trouble abroad?

It's very difficult to prove. But compare Paramjit's position now to that of Ian Stillman and Peter Bleach. Both men were British nationals convicted in an Indian court for crimes they may or may not have committed but both were released early because of direct diplomatic pressure from the British government. These men were found guilty and they got help, Paramjit Singh has yet to be convicted but still he languishes.

Now part of the reason why Paramjit Singh has spent so long in jail is the laborious Indian legal system, courts are woefully overcrowded and trials can go on for years. He has had little chance to clear his name in court because each time a session is scheduled for him to appear the prosecution finds a way of delaying the hearing - they even claimed once to be out of petrol and unable to reach the court house!

But like Gillian Gibbons there is a very good chance Paramjit Singh has become the victim of ludicrous charges abroad that should never have been brought against him. So why is it we hear so little about these events and why is it non-white British families consistently complain that they are treated differently by the UK authorities?

So perhaps it's worth asking a different question: If Paramjit Singh was white, would he still be in jail?

Posted at 08:22 PM in Minority Report | Permalink

[Guest peacemaker]

Great post!!

P.S. When I first read the title, I thought DKaur's Dad was white. lol

[D Kaur]

Great post!!

P.S. When I first read the title, I thought DKaur's Dad was white. lol

LMAO! haha!! <_<

It made you check the post though!