Sikh Summer Camp of 125 kids in Chigwell attacked by racist idiots

Racist thug attacks a volunteer's car

There is a Sikhi Camp for kids from 7+ currently taking place at the Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College in Chigwell, Essex running up until Sunday. The Camp involves the overnight stay of 120 children. The incident took place yesterday afternoon.

At first around 5 Chavs, thought to be from a nearby estate, walked into Khalsa College and caused a significant level of commotion. They attacked one Singh who approached them asking what they wanted. They were then successfully forced out of the College premises by a group of Camp sewadars and a fight broke out on the road outside the College. The situation was diffused by a passerby (claiming to be a off duty policeman), who drove the chavs off in his 4×4.

Around an hour later the Chavs returned in a larger number of 20 tooled with baseball bats and blocks of wood. A small group of Sikh kids from the camp were out on a nature walk and were verbally abused but managed to get back into the college. One of the elder sewadars had his car damaged as the group jumped on his bumper and bonnet.

Sad racists twats who think it's okay to attack a kid's camp

What mainly happened then was a stand off between the Chavs and the Sewadars around the perimeter of the Khalsa College. The Chavs mainly hurled racial abuse “Pakis, Muslims, razors and other EDL type chants” although they were tooled up to do more. Eventually the Police came and arrested 2 of the Chavs but the remaining were still adamant to carry on. The situation diffused as more Police intervened, however the Chavs still hovered around the area of the Khalsa College.

Around 50 local Singhs turned up last night to provide security to the Kids Camp, something that should have been organised by the sewadars before!!! It is an overnight camp where kids stay on the premises. It’s also concerning as we believe these Chavs must be hovering around the college during the day unchallenged.

There is a very strong chance the local Chavs from the estate will return (in perhaps larger numbers) and it was decided by local Singhs that a strong level of security is to be maintained at the college whilst the Sikhi Camp takes place until Sunday. The sewadars of the Camp should have factored in the security from the beginning even though no previous incidents had taken place in the Camp’s 30 year history.

Global Sikh News

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Sikh and Hindu groups slam EDL

Leaders of some of the largest Sikh and Hindu organisations as well as Sikh Students in this country have signed a ‘Joint Statement’ condemning the English Defence League (EDL) including any Sikh youth who support the EDL.

The statement is also signed by two Members of Parliament from Asian background as well as a number of councillors, including Councillor Lakhbir Singh, former Mayor of Luton, who himself had suffered a vicious attack by a racist youth last year after some protests in Luton.

Other signatories include, Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Southall, the largest Sikh temple outside India, together with many other Sikh and Hindu temples in Southall, west London. Its also been signed by a major Sikh temple in Barking, east London, a hotspot for the British National Party (BNP), as well as by the British Sikh Council (UK), an umbrella organisation for a number of Sikh temples in this country.

The Sikh Student Societies include some of the most famous colleges in London, like the London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL) and Imperial College as well as the University of Hertfordshire. The statement is also signed by the Indian Workers Association (GB), Sikhs In England ( SIE ), an influential Sikh organisation, and Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

The statement reads, “We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned by the rise in fascism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism and racism. The English Defence League (EDL) has organised events across the country, stirring up hatred, Islamophobia and racism – running riot in some cases and provoking violent attacks on Muslim, black and Asian communities and on Mosques and Mandirs (Hindu temples)”.

It further highlights, ” They are using the old tactics of ‘divide and rule’ and are trying to divide the Asians by isolating the Muslim community. Furthermore, some misguided Sikh youth are letting themselves to be used by the EDL while a Sikh man has disgracefully joined the BNP. These people are helping to spread mistrust within our communities and we whole heartedly condemn their actions”.

And adds that, “At a time of economic crisis with mass unemployment and impending deep public spending cuts - if the racists are allowed to make any further gains then we all would suffer from grave consequences. Thus we urge all Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of other faiths to come together to strongly condemn the actions of these racist organizations and unite to turn back this tide of hatred”.

Balwinder Singh Rana, spokesperson for UAF, also added, “The EDL pretend that they are not racist but they are no different than the old NF and the BNP. Now is the time for Sikhs and Hindus to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Muslim brethren and tell the EDL that their sinister aims of ‘divide and rule’ will not work. Otherwise it’s the Muslims today and it will be all us tomorrow”.

Varinder Singh, youth representative for the Turban Campaign, said, ”It is of great concern that our youth are being recruited into the fascist and Islamophobic ideology which the English Defence League promotes. We as a community must face this threat to our youth head on by staying true to the core teachings of the Sikh Guru’s, which emphasise the importance of pluralism and brotherhood amongst mankind.”

So far the EDL has held more than thirty marches and demonstrations up and down the country, often ending in violence. Now they are to return to Luton on Saturday, 5th February , which they regard their hometown as that’s where they began about 18 months ago. Councillor Lakhbir Singh, ex Mayor of Luton, who himself had suffered a vicious attack by a racist youth last year after some previous protests in Luton is also one of the signatories.

Asian Image

Sikhs show opposition to EDL’s march

Muslim and Sikh leaders meet at the Faizan e Madina Mosque [Wednesday] night

Representatives from Peterborough’s Sikh community came out in opposition to the English Defence League (EDL) at a city mosque.

Representatives from the two Gurdwaras in Peterborough met with Muslims from local mosques at the Faizan e Madina Mosque in Gladstone Street last night. Their purpose was to show their support to the city’s Muslim community and to distance themselves from [an] EDL leader Gurmeet Singh, who is also a Sikh.

A statement signed by representatives from Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara Sahib and Gurdwara Baba Budha Sahib Ji said: “On behalf of the Peterborough Sikhs we vehemently oppose the views of the EDL and any of its members. In Peterborough, Sikhs have worked hard to build relationships with other religious communities and have expressed our concern that this demonstration could upset the balance of the wider community.”

Peterborough Today

‘My turban saved me in World War 2’

Squadron Leader Mohinder Singh Pujji was one of a few Indian ace flyers in the RAF and as the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain approaches, 91 year old Pujji has revealed how his turban had saved his life.

The young Sikh fighter was forced to crash land his fighter aircraft near the White Cliffs of Dover after a dogfight. After a dangerous crash landing and with serious head injuries, the young pilot was pulled from the wreckage of his Hurricane fighter plane. Sqdn Ldr Pujji gave his account of what happened and how his religious symbol saved him:

“The padding of my turban saved me, it was full of blood. I was taken to the hospital but after seven days I was back to flying again. In the fight a German bullet smashed into my dashboard and all my instruments were gone. Oil was pouring out of the engine and covered the windscreen. I asked for directions back to the nearest landing strip as I could see the Channel beneath me and it looked so cold – I really didn’t want to bail out.

“I could see the White Cliffs and I thought I would make it and then the landing strip appeared with fire engines around it. But as I put my landing gear down the fire took hold of the plane – there was blood pouring from my head but that six feet of wound cloth which makes up my turban saved me from worse impact injuries. People say you claim this as you are a religious man but I really think it was the case.”

Sqdn Ldr Singh Pujji explained that he signed up to the RAF after seeing an advert in an Indian newspaper titled: ‘Pilots needed for Royal Air Force.’ When he had learnt to fly in 1937 he became one of just eight pilots from the Empire colony good enough to fight. Mohinder Singh Pujji has also recently campaigned against the BNP and Nick Griffin for using the Iconic Spitfire as symbol; Pujji was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.

The Sikh Times

Prey for the BNP

The Sikhs who join in the hatred of Muslims are deluded if they expect to avoid racial exclusion

Rajinder Singh, a British Sikh with an extreme dislike of Muslims, is, according to the BNP, "the kind of immigrant you want if you're going to have them". And if, as expected, the party members vote to allow ethnic minorities to join, Singh will be the first to be conferred this "honour". Sikh organisations have dismissed him – and fellow BNP wannabe "Ammo Singh" (a pseudonym) – as unrepresentative, and it is easy to write them off as self-hating lunatics or pranksters. But to do so is to obscure the larger realities of how race, religion and hate operate.

What has been lost in the storm over Nick Griffin's BBC appearance and the debate over the freedom to voice hatred in the guise of "white rights" is that modern racism survives through a parasitical alliance of vicious groups and ideologies, each of which thinks it is superior to and more entitled to preservation and growth than the others. What they share is a commitment to delusions of absolute racial or religious grandeur and purity even as they compete for victim status.

The two Sikhs' hostility to Islam is strong enough for them to overlook the contempt in which the BNP ultimately holds all racial minorities. Communities in Britain with links to the Indian subcontinent have, over time, seceded from their rich shared heritage and the assertive "Asian" banner under which they fought successfully for their rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Dispersed into the sectarian religious identities of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim, they have all but forgotten how to mobilise together against the threat of an opportunistic ethnic majoritarianism that does not, ultimately, make fine distinctions among those it perceives as outsiders.

Generalising labels like "Asian" may have their drawbacks but, as Arun Kundnani of the Institute of Race Relations notes of Sunrise Radio's bizarre decision to drop "Asian" from its banner under sustained pressure from extremist groups like the World Hindu Council, the hope underlying such disaffiliation is that "racist whites could be persuaded to exclude Hindus and Sikhs from their hatred, and focus instead solely on Muslims". A 2006 Runnymede Trust survey claims that as many as 80% of Hindus and Sikhs in Britain wished to be seen as specifically distinct from Muslims. "Don't Freak, I'm a Sikh", urged T-shirts printed after the 7 July bombings.

Griffin's assertion that "many" Hindus and Sikhs support the BNP is a wild exaggeration. But we need to face up to the messy reality of a society where ethno-religious fragmentation and tensions between minority groups work to the advantage of majority chauvinism. Kundnani points out that as early as 2002 the BNP was able to persuade a tiny Sikh faction called the Shere-e-Punjab to participate in its anti-Muslim campaign. Even if such collaborators are a tiny fringe, minority communities need to be aware of the ways in which their participation in divisive categories and separatist communal warfare only strengthens the positions of the racists who seek to subordinate them entirely.

Anti-immigrant views among migrants are not new, but what extremisms also share is an exaggerated fear that other groups are numerically overwhelming theirs. When Sikh-Muslim gang fights broke out in Slough, the language used mimicked the defensive territorial language of the BNP. "Muslims run Slough," one gang member insisted at the time. "Why are Sikhs coming from outside?"

Ammo Singh told the BBC, which has made a habit of using fringe groups as representatives of entire communities, that Islam was planning to take over Britain through "a combination of immigration, high birth rate and conversion".

Rajinder Singh, like many Hindus and Sikhs, has invoked the 1947 partition of India, in which he lost his father, as the cause of his enmity towards Muslims. This selective emphasis conveniently obscures two facts. The first is that it was the British empire and its policies of divide and rule which culminated in the partition that was its last official act. The second is that all three communities are fully responsible for the horrific butchery, bloodletting and rape that followed. Rather than mourning the tragedy of partition, men like Rajinder Singh seek to re-enact it in Britain, once again under the aegis of British racial supremacism.

The time has come for us to recognise racial and religious hatred in all its manifestations for what it is and take a stand against it – alongside right-thinking whites – not only when it is directed at us, but also when it is undertaken in our name. The colour line hasn't disappeared yet, but the real struggle is between fascist hatreds and humane solidarity.

Comment is free

Fury after BNP poppy wreath laid among Sikh tributes at Birmingham ceremony

Sikhs spoke of their “disgust” today after a BNP poppy wreath was laid among Sikh tributes at a Birmingham Remembrance ceremony.

The BNP laurel appeared to have been deliberately placed in the middle of those left by members of the city’s Sikh community inside the Hall of Memory in Centenary Square.

Guru Ram Dass Singh Gurdwara, in Balsall Heath, was one of the temples which had laid a decoration on the plinth inside the hall. Girval Singh, general secretary of the Moseley Road temple, claimed the British National Party, which restricts membership to white-only British citizens, had shown a lack of respect for Sikhs who had fought and died in the British Army.

“I’m absolutely disgusted,” he said. “Many Sikhs were born in this country and many fought for this country so we deserve respect. They should be ashamed of themselves and show more respect for that particular event and day. I’m very, very disappointed.”

The wreathes had been laid to honour British soldiers who lost their lives in conflicts past and present as the square hosted ceremonies for Remembrance Sunday and yesterday’s Armistice Day.

Kulwant Singh Purewal, a 41-year-old electronics engineer from Edgbaston, attended the Armistice Day service in Centenary Square to mark the bravery of his father and uncle who both served in the British Armed Forces.

He said: “I’m a Sikh who was born in England and is proud to be a member of the British Empire. It gives me pride to remember the men who gave their lives to defend unity, democracy and freedom. Many Sikhs were born here and should not be subjected to this kind of insensitivity. What message is this sending out?“You are born in England and fight for England but then we have to kick you out. Members of my family spent 35 years in the British Army. They served proudly and this is a disgrace to their memory.”

Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, said the party had every right to place wreathes wherever they wanted. He said: “We have as much right to lay a wreath as anyone else. If we don’t lay a wreath we get criticised so we can’t win. Some of our policies are very popular with Sikhs. We don’t regard them as a threat - they are welcome to stay should they wish.”

Earlier this week BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP was accused of whipping up patriotism and support for his party when he joined mourners as the coffins of six British servicemen were presented through Wootton Bassett.

The Royal British Legion, which oversees the collection of wreathes for public remembrance services, said the BNP decoration had not been received by its staff and had been laid independently.

Mike Morris, county manager of the RBL in Birmingham, said: “As far as I’m aware they did not go through our secretary. We are not political animals, of course. Anybody is entitled to place a wreath - we do not police it.”

A spokesman for Birmingham City Council, which helped organise the ceremony, said: “Every member of the public is well within their right to lay a wreath as long as there is no offensive message. We would not want to turn it into politics - it distracts from the importance of the day.”

Birmingham Mail

BNP leader's race claim sparks fury

The first ethnic minority Mayor of Barking and Dagenham branded the BNP "irresponsible" after the far-right party asserted that black and Asian Britons "do not exist". Indian-born Cllr Inder Singh Jamu, 72, blasted the BNP claim this would be denying other Britons their identity and that they should instead be called "racial foreigners".

The River ward councillor who moved to England in 1966 and became a British citizen in the late seventies, having worked at Ford Dagenham until the eighties and run his own driving school for 23 years, said: "I feel proud to be British. I was the first Asian Mayor of Barking and Dagenham in 1998 and last month I received the Freedom of the Borough. I don't understand these people."

He added: "I condemn this statement. This is a most irresponsible and racist statement made to damage community cohesion. I am a Sikh. We believe in equality of all races. This is our fundamental belief."

Barking and Dagenham church leaders Rev Mike Reith and Rev Gordon Tarry also criticised the "outrageous" use of language, which, they said, reminded them of Nazi Germany. Mr Tarry, vicar of St Margaret's, The Broadway, Barking, said: "It's an outrageous slur on black and Asian people, which is contrary to Christian beliefs and resonant with comments from Nazi Germany."

Mr Reith, vicar of Dagenham Parish Church in Crown Street, said: "To target black and Asian people is to be colour prejudiced, and that is against our national identity. The BNP identity ties up more with Nazi Germany than with traditional England."

Barking and Dagenham BNP leader Cllr Bob Bailey rallied behind party chairman Nick Griffin, who said denying non ethnic minority Britons their identity would be a kind of "bloodless genocide".

The Alibon ward councillor said: "I don't think there is anything controversial. Nick Griffin acknowledges that if somebody has a British passport, if they respect our laws and culture, they could be classed civically as British. But I don't think it's fair to the British people to deny their existence. This is what he said and I agree with that. British people have lived on these islands for thousands and thousands of years. Saying these people are British denies British people their own existence. It dilutes it, it waters it down."

Barking and Dagenham Recorder

I did not sign BNP election form, says black woman

The BNP look set to become involved in a fraud probe after a series of "dodgy" signatures for far-right election candidates were discovered.

One African-Caribbean woman in Birmingham told a Lib Dem councillor, Martin Mullaney, that she was furious at her name appearing on a BNP nomination form. The unnamed woman was contacted by Lib Dem investigators after they became suspicious over a number of names on papers submitted by BNP candidates to the council's electoral services department.

Her name appears on a form nominating BNP's Zane Patchell as a candidate for the Lozells and East Handsworth ward in Birmingham. The Jamaican-born woman was shown the signature purporting to be from her. She strongly denied that it is her signature.

Cllr Mullaney has identified at least five other residents of "ethnic background" whose names appear on BNP nomination forms which he believes are suspicious.

The names belong to a Hindu family, a Sikh and two Muslims. Aston resident Abid Hussain has told local reporters his father signed a form but was told it was a petition calling for improvements in the local area. In nearby Sandwell two local residents, Andrew Smith and his partner Lynn Marshall, have expressed shock that their names appear on the nomination forms of BNP candidate Scott Dale.

'I never signed for the BNP, and neither did Lynn” he said. 'I’m not a BNP supporter, I’m a staunch Labour man.' Local police are investigating.

Meanwhile in north Wales, BNP candidate Dallus Weaver has been cleared over claims he had forged a signature on his nomination paper before standing in Flintshire. The signature in question is said to belong to a policeman who is now under internal investigation. In May 2001, six BNP council candidates in Burnley were excluded after it was discovered that several of the people who were supposed to have signed the nomination papers denied doing so.

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