Afghan KL envoy condemns attacks ‘on our Sikhs and Hindus’

By Asia Samachar Team | MALAYSIA |

The Afghanistan envoy in Malaysia has condemned the attack on the Kabul gurdwara, which killed 25 people, as an attack on its own people.

In a letter, the Kuala Lumpur embassy said it ‘strongly condemns the unconscionable terrorist attack on our Sikhs and Hindus in Kabul on 25 March 2020.’

“This was an attack on the people of Afghanistan. All of us share the pain of our Sikh and Hindu brothers and sisters,” it said.

The letter was in response to a note dispatched by Khalsa Diwan Malaysia (KDM), one of the oldest running Sikh organisations, appealing the Afghanistan Government to provide help to the victims and ensure more security be enforced to avoid such incidents in future.

“It was heartening to see the local Afganistanis helping out the victims,” KDM president Santokh Singh Randhawa said in the letter.

A copy of the letter, addressed to Afghaistan ambassador to Kuala Lumpur, Dr. Moheb Rahman Spingar, was emailed to Asia Samachar.

KDM said it was ‘greatly saddened by the cowardly and dastardly attack’ on the Sikhs gathered for a prayer at Gurdwara Guru Har Rai in Shor Bazaar.

A Sikh organisation har urged the Canadian government to absorb the last remaining Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan after the latest terror attack upon a Sikh gurdwara in central Kabul on Wednesday that killed 25 men, women and children.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada has written to Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino to highlight the desperate plight of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus.

It highlighted the need for a direct sponsorship program to get them out safely before more die at the hands of ISIS.

For many amongst the 2,000 odd Sikhs and Hindus, the senseless attack upon the Gurdwara Guru Har Rai in Shor Bazaar was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back as far as their dreams of continuing to live in Afghanistan.

A gunmen stormed into the gurdwara, shot discriminately and held 80 hostages. In the end, at least 25 people, including a child and women, were dead. On the next day, an explosive went off just outside the crematorium as the Sikhs were cremating their dead. And the next day, yet another attack.

In response, the letter noted that in 2018, Dr. Moheb Rahman was in Kabul as head of the Institute of Diplomacy in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, a similar ‘brutal attack’ happened on the Sikh brothers and sisters.

The July 2018 attack killed at least 10 Sikhs.