Sikh group wants RCMP to investigate Alberta highway killing as hate crime

The fatal shooting of a 22-year-old man on the highway near Leduc, south of Edmonton, last weekend should be investigated as a hate crime, according to a Sikh group in Canada.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) wants Alberta RCMP to investigate the March 14 killing of 22-year-old Birinder Singh, who came to Canada from India three years ago, as motivated by hate.

“We’re calling out police to investigate the whole incident by using the entire hate crime resources and tools,” Jaspreet Singh, the WSO’s regional president for Ontario, told OMNI News. “Because apparently this doesn’t look like a normal incident, a normal murder. Most likely, I mean this hasn’t been confirmed by the police, but it looks like the motivation behind the whole incident, behind this murder, was a hate against immigrants.

“This is really heartbreaking, shocking and also concerning.”

The two friends who were in the car with Singh when he was shot dead also expressed to CityNews the shooting may have been a case of discrimination — not road rage or related to anything else. They say the passenger of a pickup truck fired at them unprovoked and completely at random. Singh was struck in the neck and he died of his injuries.

“Why they are shooting us? Because we did nothing,” one of the friends told CityNews Tuesday. “We didn’t even try to overtake them. We weren’t doing any race, we didn’t do anything. We were just enjoying our own company.

“Nobody knows. Even though we can think (it’s) due to brown skin, if we can say, because on our perspective, this is the only reason, only possibility.”

The WSO says the daytime shooting, in which police have yet to identify a suspect or motive, comes amid what they call a “disturbing rise in anti-Sikh hate across Canada.”

“From last couple of years, we have been witnessing xenophobia and hate against immigrants, especially anti-Sikh hate, because being in Sikh attire, tying turban, having beard and brown colour, obviously, this is making Sikhs facing the heat at the forefront. We have been raising voices about this from last couple of years,” Jaspreet Singh said.

“We have seen this hate spilling out… on every social media platforms, whether Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. Whenever you log into something, you will see the hate spilling out. But I think right now, you are seeing that thing converting into actual physical violence.”

Birinder Singh’s dream of attending business school and owning a construction company brought him to Brampton, Ont., three years ago from India’s Punjab region, where his family still lives. He had not seen his parents since coming to Canada. He moved to Edmonton five months ago.

–With files from OMNI News