By Avani Dias, Mayeta Clark, Mridula Amin, and Dylan Welch
Late one night in January 2023, Harjinder Singh’s phone rang while he drove his taxi around Melbourne. It was a man he’d never met, speaking Punjabi, with a veiled threat: Stop the referendum going ahead or “the result will be bad”.
A flag flies outside Harjinder’s house for a nation that doesn’t exist. The Australian citizen is part of a group of Sikhs fighting for a state to secede from India and become its own country: Khalistan.
The non-binding referendum Harjinder was helping organise — designed to gauge support for Khalistan — had headed to Brisbane a few months later when his phone rang again.
“I got a call at midnight, and I was scared … [He said], ‘You’re not listening to us, so be careful.’”
Harjinder wasn’t deterred.
Then, he said, Indian authorities sent people to his parents’ home in Punjab saying they should get their son to “stop” his activism in Australia.
“[They said], ‘We got orders from the Indian authorities. If anyone’s doing the opposite against the country, we got orders to kill them,’” Harjinder said. His parents were scared.
This story was originally published in abc.net.au. Read the full story here.
