The transportation minister said Thursday that Canada’s federal police are looking into videos that say people should not fly with Air India starting November 19.
Transportation Minister Pablo Rodriguez told reporters in Ottawa, “We take every threat seriously, but especially when it comes to airlines.”
He also said that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “are looking into it.”
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel for the US-based Sikhs for Justice, is in the videos that were shared online last week. Sikhs for Justice wants to make a separate Sikh state out of India.
People of Sikh faith are told in the video, “Don’t fly Air India after November 19. Your lives may be in danger.”
He told the Canadian media that this wasn’t a threat but rather a request that people not do business with Indian companies.
In India, the Sikh independence movement is mostly over. In the 1980s, security forces put down an uprising in the state of Punjab by using deadly force.
About 2 percent of Canada’s population, or 770,000 Sikhs, live there. A vocal group of these people want to make a separate Indian state called Khalistan.
In September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he thought Indian agents were involved in the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader near Vancouver in June. He also kicked out of Canada an Indian minister who was thought to have a connection to the killing.
India said the shocking claim was “absurd.”
Relations between India and Canada have gotten worse because of the murder that hasn’t been solved and India’s dissatisfaction with how Ottawa has dealt with Sikh rebels.
