The number of asylum applications Canada received from India began rising after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, federal government data shows.
In fact, the number of Indian refugees admitted since the beginning of the year is third behind those from Iran and Turkey.
Some of these asylum seekers claim to have been tortured. They beat me so badly that I was unconscious most of the time, explains Randhir Singh, who lives in Montreal.
Religious minorities such as Sikhs, Muslims and Christians are facing increasing discrimination in India, according to an immigration lawyer.
Traumatized
Mr Singh claims Indian police officers punched him in the face, causing him to lose two teeth, and beat him with wooden sticks when they detained him at a police station in May 2015. He remained detained there for three days.
The 70-year-old adds that he was the victim of billeting. They almost tore me apart. […] “They stretched me on both sides,” he said in Punjabi in an interview with CBC News.
He adds that police released him because his wife sought help from officials at the Gurdwara, the Sikh temple in Nijampur, the Punjab village where they lived.
Mr. Singh and his wife, Rajvinder Kaur, 67, now live in Montreal. You can stay in Canada with a temporary residence permit issued by the federal immigration minister in August. Their case had made headlines as they faced expulsion from the country.
The torture still haunts Mr. Singh. He suffers from acute post-traumatic stress disorder, according to medical records filed in federal court.
“She is one of the most traumatized people I have seen in the last decade,” said Stewart Istvanffy, a Montreal human rights lawyer who is representing the couple in their asylum application.
The couple still hopes that their asylum application will be approved.
Influx of Indian refugees
So far this year, Canada has accepted 1,344 asylum applications from India. According to the Immigration and Refugees Board of Canada (IRB), this total is third only to Iran, with 2,730 accepted applications, and Turkey, with 1,993 accepted applications.
The country accepted 3,469 asylum applications from India in 2022, the highest number in at least 20 years, according to federal data.
In 2014, fewer than 20 people from India were admitted. The IRB does not provide accurate numbers if the total is less than 20.
The number of accepted applications from India has also increased steadily over the last decade.
That rate — accepted applications versus rejected applications — has increased from less than 20% in 2014 to nearly 50% in 2022, according to Sean Rehaag, director of the Refugee Law Lab, an online data and records portal.
Canada recognizes that there are persecutions and human rights abuses in India, said Mr. Rehaag, an associate professor at Osgoode Law School and director of the Center for Refugee Studies at the University of York, which houses the lab.
This combination – an increase in the number of applicants and an increase in admission rates – suggests to me that the human rights situation in India has deteriorated over this period.
Religious intolerance
This data shows that the number of accepted asylum applications from India exceeded 300 in 2019 for the first time in more than a decade. After a slight decline in 2020, a year of the pandemic, the number of accepted applications exceeded 1,000 in 2021.
Correlation does not imply causation, but there is definitely causation here, says Raj Sharma, an immigration lawyer at Stewart Sharma Harsanyi in Calgary.
According to Mr. Sharma, religious minorities such as Sikhs, Muslims and Christians are facing increasing discrimination in India.
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Raj Sharma says he is seeing more cases of asylum seekers from India saying they are being persecuted because of their religion.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Justin Pennell/CBC News
“One thing that we haven’t really seen in the past, but that we are seeing more of now, is the rise of religious intolerance,” he said, adding that the Modi government has taken a much more forceful view and behavior of Hindu majority force.
problems in the world
This is not the first time that a wave of asylum seekers from India – particularly from the Sikh faith community – have sought refuge in Canada.
Conflicts between Indian state authorities and Sikh separatists in the early and mid-1980s sparked a wave of demands, says Sharma.
This led to the “first exodus,” he says.
This exodus also led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1985 that laid the foundation for the Immigration and Refugee Service. The case involved six Sikh plaintiffs and a Guyanese woman, says Barbara Jackman, a Toronto lawyer who represented some of the parties in the case.
When there are problems in the world, it also affects Canada. “We are seeing the movement of people coming and asking for protection,” Mr Jackman said.
From a peaceful life to harassment
Mr. Singh and Ms. Kaur led a peaceful life in India, they say in an affidavit filed June 29 in federal court. Mr. Singh was the caretaker of the village temple and Ms. Kaur was a sarpanch, or elected leader, of the village.
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Rajvinder Kaur (left) and Randhir Singh.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Charles Contant/CBC News
The events that forced them out of the country began one night in May 2015 when two Sikh men, claiming their truck had broken down, asked to sleep in the gurdwara.
The local police showed up at the gurdwara at night. The two men fled and Mr Singh was arrested.
Police told him that the men he was harboring were activists.
The police interrogated me brutally. […] My religious symbols were disrespectfully taken away. My beard was pulled. I was abused, humiliated and beaten. […] The police forced me to confess my connections to the activists. I have denied all allegations.
Mr Singh said police continued to harass him and accused him of harboring activists on other occasions.
Five months later, Mr. Singh and Ms. Kaur arrived in Canada.
Her son Sikander Singh still lives in the state of Punjab. His home was searched twice this year by federal police who claimed his parents were involved with Khalistan activists, the son said in a federal court affidavit supporting his asylum application.
There [National Investigation Agency] I have accused my parents of money laundering and conspiracy against India, which is completely false, the statement said.
For Mr. Singh and Ms. Kaur, life in Canada has its own problems.
Sometimes, [ma femme] Go to the library or somewhere else. “I am alone and remain depressed without talking to anyone,” says Mr. Singh.
He attempted suicide this summer when they were threatened with deportation from Canada. Death here is better than death there, he said.
They killed me, explains Mr. Singh. They kill a lot of people there.
The Modi government reacted with anger to Canada’s allegation earlier this month that the Indian government was involved in the killing of pro-Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar (New Window) in June in British Surrey, Colombia.
The Indian government has suspended visa processing in Canada – banning Canadians from entering India – and warned Indian travelers that they could face politically sanctioned hate crimes and criminal violence in Canada.
With reporting by CBC News’ Jorge Barrera