{"id":301373,"date":"2018-08-13T09:25:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T09:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=301373"},"modified":"2018-08-13T09:25:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T09:25:20","slug":"over-2000-people-turn-out-to-counter-pro-khalistan-supporters-rally-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/over-2000-people-turn-out-to-counter-pro-khalistan-supporters-rally-in-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 2,000 people turn out to counter Pro-Khalistan supporters\u2019 rally in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-301374 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/trafagal-300x165.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"165\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/08\/trafagal-300x165.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/08\/trafagal.jpg 656w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>More than 2,000 people waving placards such as \u201cSikhs for a United India\u201d and \u201cWe stand for one united strong India\u201d turned out at Trafalgar Square, London on August 12 to counter Pakistan-backed Referendum 2020 event demanding an independent Sikh nation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Pro-Indian supporters turned down the rally organized by pro-Khalistani supporters who shouted slogans such as \u2018Khalistan Zindabad\u2019 and waved anti-India placards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">British-Pakistani, Lord Nazir Ahmed\u2019s, open participation at the event exposed Pakistan&#8217;s direct financial and logistic support to the event.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Sikh separatist leader Jaswant Singh Thekedar reportedly condemned the Pakistan based propaganda. He widely accused Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who was one of the organizers, of being a Pakistani stooge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;No religious Sikh leader has participated in the event. Pannun was making publicity of this event for the past two years and spent huge amount of money. They hired TV and radio stations for the publicity. We believe Pakistan has spent entire money for this publicity. These Sikhs are mostly enjoying Pakistan&#8217;s patronage and we do not support their cause,&#8221; Singh added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u00a0He further added, &#8220;The Referendum 2020 is totally unlawful and the voting will have no relevance&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Navdeep Singh, one of the organizers of Pro-India demonstration said, \u201cIndian Sikhs don\u2019t want this Referendum 2020, they don\u2019t even know what this Referendum is about, who is organizing and why.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had expressed its disappointment at the stance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, \u201cWe have said that it seeks to propagate violence, secessionism, and hatred and we expect them to take into account the larger perspective of the relationship when they take a decision on such matters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 2,000 people waving placards such as \u201cSikhs for a United India\u201d and \u201cWe stand for one united strong India\u201d turned out at Trafalgar Square, London on August 12 to counter Pakistan-backed Referendum 2020 event demanding an independent Sikh nation. Pro-Indian supporters turned down the rally organized by pro-Khalistani supporters who shouted slogans such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":301374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53],"tags":[3410,4133,48,4132,2987,630,1783],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301375,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301373\/revisions\/301375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/301374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}