New York, USA - Several dozen Sikhs on Thursday protested a speech by an Indian minister who they say instigated mob riots in their country in 1984 that left more than 3,000 dead, most of them Sikhs.
About 60 members of the Sikhs for Justice, a U.S.-based human rights organization, gathered outside McGraw-Hill's headquarters in Manhattan where Kamal Nath, India's federal minister in charge of road transport and highways and a Congress party member of India's Parliament, was addressing McGraw-Hill Construction's Global Construction Summit.
"We want to put him behind bars. Anyone guilty should be behind bars," said Avtar Singh Pannu of Queens, the group's coordinator.
The group's legal adviser, Gurpatwant S. Pannun, called Nath "a violator of human rights" who shouldn't be in the U.S.
The 1984 riots remain a controversial issue in India. They were sparked by the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards after ordering a crackdown on Sikh separatists in northern India. The separatists were fighting to carve their own state out of Hindu-majority India.
A government commission set up to investigate the carnage questioned Nath about his presence near a Sikh temple during the period of the riots.
Nath maintained that he was in the area only to help create peace.
In its 2005 report, the commission said there was no evidence to suggest that Nath had instigated a mob to violence. The commission said Nath's testimony was vague but that was probably because he was questioned nearly 20 years afterward.
Sikhs for Justice filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court this week against Nath on behalf of the deceased and injured victims of the riots and their families.
Nath told The Associated Press he had not seen the lawsuit but was "surprised, shocked and appalled because I have never been charged."
Asked about claims that he helped instigate the riots, Nath said: "Well, if I had done that I would have been charged by the police, I would have been charged by the courts in India as others have been and I was never charged. I've come to the United States God knows how many times. ... It's never been an issue. This is the first time."
In the years since the riots, there have been repeated allegations that top members of the Congress party helped organize the mobs that rampaged through Sikh neighborhoods in New Delhi two-and-a-half decades ago.
Investigations into what role, if any, senior Congress party members played in the killings have moved slowly. Critics accuse the party, which has ruled the country much of the time since the riots, of trying to protect its own. Party officials deny a cover-up.
Several other people, none of them senior Congress members, have been sent to prison for taking part in the riots.
At the New York demonstration, protesters held up signs that said "Stand for Justice" and "Demanding Justice" and black inner tubes that symbolized the tires that were burned during the riots.
"Today we want to create awareness within ourselves and the international community and embarrass Kamal Nath and the people who invited him here," said Ranjit Singh, 52, manager of an air conditioning company.
Pannun, the legal adviser, said that Nath should not be invited to speak in a country that stands for human rights.