Ravinderjit Singh Gogi is a political prisoner who is being tortured, says family in California

Stockton, CA: Apr. 21, 2015 – U.S. citizen Ravinderjit Singh Gogi remains indefinitely detained in India after spending two months behinds bars without seeing a judge, but just two days after seven U.S. Congressional representatives wrote to the State Department on his behalf, officials from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi finally visited the American citizen imprisoned in Ludhiana, a major city in India’s Punjab state.

Gogi (seated) with his father, Surat, and son, Sahib, who is now 17.

Gogi was brought to court for arraignment for the fourth time on April 17, but his hearing was canceled and rescheduled for April 28. Two embassy officials accompanying Gogi’s sister, Sarvrinder Kaur (also a U.S. citizen), were turned away from the court entrance when they arrived to witness the hearing. Told they had to receive police permission to visit Gogi, officials were denied permission until after visiting two separate senior officials and finally talking directly by phone to the state’s director general of police.

“Police don’t want to let us see my brother because they want to hide the ways they are torturing him,” said Mandeep Kaur Dhillon, Gogi’s youngest sister. The imprisoned American is the only brother of six children. His sisters are all actively working for his release; Mandeep and her sister, Roopinder, both spoke over the weekend in Vancouver, Canada at the Surrey Vaisakhi festival, which drew an estimated 300,000 Sikhs from around the world.

Mandeep Kaur speaks for her brother’s release in Surrey, BC, Canada.

His sisters say Gogi is being tortured in custody and housed in inhumane conditions that include rancid food and severely overcrowded cells. On April 13, Sarvrinder reported witnessing police beating her brother in a court detention cell. After visiting him the next day, she described seeing extreme bruising on his back, neck, and shoulders. When embassy officials visited him in jail on the 17th, Mandeep says, “Ravinder reported how he was abused and described his pain. The police showed fabricated records that he had received medical treatment and was no longer in pain. My brother says his pain is excruciating.”

Gogi has only been allowed to see the jail doctor, but Mandeep says, “The government doctor took one look, said he was fine, and dismissed him.” The family is demanding an immediate independent medical examination. “We want the family and the U.S. Embassy to be directly involved in picking an impartial doctor,” said Mandeep. Arguing her brother is an innocent victim of discrimination, she explained: “Ravinder was targeted for being the son of a Sikh man who is conducting a peaceful political protest. My brother is not charged with any crime, but only with encouraging my father’s hunger strike by visiting him in the hospital.”

The family patriarch, Surat Singh Khalsa, has been on hunger strike since January 16 as a protest for the release of several dozen Sikh political prisoners. A permanent resident of the United States, Khalsa was formerly a government schoolteacher in India. In June 1984, he quit his job in disgust over an Indian Army invasion of the revered Sikh Golden Temple that left thousands of Sikh pilgrims dead. He began organizing protest rallies, was injured in 1986 when police opened fire on unarmed protesters outside the Punjab Legislative Assembly, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1988.

Khalsa’s son, Ravinderjit Singh Gogi, became a U.S. citizen in 1996. A father of five children, he owns a transportation business in the small town of Lathrop in central California. All five of his sisters also live in the United States. Their father got his green card but remained heavily active in social and political life in Punjab, typically traveling to India at least once a year. He first conducted a political hunger strike in 2011 to support passage of the stringent anti-corruption Jan Lokpal bill by India’s parliament.

On February, 2015, three weeks after the 83-year-old Khalsa began his current hunger strike, a team of over 100 police officers arrested him at his home. Forcibly hospitalizing him, they stitched a feeding tube to the forehead and nose of the frail old man. Deeply concerned for their father’s health, Gogi and his sisters kept vigil beside him in the hospital. But on February 26, over 300 police descended on the hospital, arresting Gogi, journalist Surinder Singh, and others who were with Khalsa.

On March 23, Khalsa said, “Police has registered cases against my son Ravinder Jeet Singh and other Singhs under section 107/151 for allegedly provoking me to die. These cases are totally false and baseless. I have been struggling peacefully for human rights since when I was 13 years old and will keep doing so till my last breath.” The family alleges Gogi’s arrest is a purely political move as the police have also directly told him they will drop all charges and release him if he persuades Khalsa to end his hunger strike.

Surat Singh Khalsa is picking up the baton of political hunger strike for release of Sikh political prisoners from Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa, who twice went on hunger strike for that cause. In 2013, he refused food for 44 days, and in late 2014 he began a 64-day hunger strike that ended on January 15, 2015. The next day, Surat Singh Khalsa began his protest.

Hunger-striking has a long tradition in India as a form of peaceful, nonviolent political protest. Prominent anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare was arrested for hunger-striking in support of the Jan Lokpal bill. Irom Sharmila, a 43-year-old poet known as the “Iron Lady of Manipur” for her endurance, has been on hunger strike since 2000 to protest the massacre of 10 civilians by Indian security forces in Manipur state. She has been repeatedly arrested and force-fed for the past 15 years. In 1929, while protesting the British Empire’s occupation of India, Jatindra Nath Das died after a 63-day hunger strike. Before being hanged by the colonial British government for advocating independence, Bhagat Singh carried on Das’s hunger strike for 116 days. Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian politician and Hindu preacher whose portrait hangs in every government office in India, was imprisoned four times for hunger-striking against colonialism.

“Just like in the days of the British Raj, the Indian government ruthlessly crushes all dissent,” said Pieter Friedrich, Executive Director of Sikh Information Centre, one of the US-based groups demanding Gogi’s release. “Gogi is charged with India’s Criminal Procedure Codes 107 and 151, which are laws designed to prevent the breaching of the peace. They are preventative laws, meaning they criminalize intent. That is, Gogi has not committed any crime, but is only accused of intending to breach the peace. He denies he intended to breach the peace, and there is no evidence he has breached it, so he is entirely innocent.”

“We would like to bring your attention to the case of Ravinder Jeet Singh and his father, Surat Singh Khalsa, who were both taken into custody in Punjab, India on February 26, 2015 while Mr. Khalsa was conducting a hunger strike,” began an April 15 letter from the United States Congress to the State Department. Congressman Jerry McNerney of Stockton, CA, who is Gogi’s representative, was the first of seven to sign the letter calling on Secretary of State John Kerry to “assist Mr. Singh and Mr. Khalsa.” Gogi’s family and a coalition of groups including Organization for Minorities of India, Ensaaf, and the West Sacramento, Turlock, and Stockton Sikh gurdwaras are actively campaigning for all U.S. representatives to join the letter.

“We believe Congressman McNerney has the courage to carry this struggle forward,” says Mandeep. “The demand for release of my innocent brother and father from indefinite detention in a foreign country is a civil rights issue that we hope will unite everyone in Congress. Perhaps the next step is for Congressman McNerney and others who signed this letter to condemn my brother’s torture and tell the U.S. Embassy to insist on an independent medical examination. My brother’s life is at stake, he is suffering as we speak, and his children need their father back. Surely Congress must act now.”

California has strong historical ties to the Sikh people and their participation in human rights struggles in India. The oldest Sikh gurdwara in the United States, considered the first permanent Sikh-American settlement, was founded in Stockton, CA in 1912. At the same time, the founders formed an organization to spark revolution against British colonial rule in India. After tens of thousands of Sikhs were killed by the Indian government in the 1984 Sikh Genocide, the diaspora in the United States grew exponentially as many Sikh families fled India in search of religious freedom. On April 16, the California State Assembly became the first state or national government entity in the world to recognize the 1984 genocide as state-sponsored.

Amar Shergill, a board member of the American-Sikh Political Action Committee that wrote and sponsored ACR 34, the State Assembly’s resolution recognizing the genocide, remarked: “This resolution is the first time that any nation or government has officially declared that the government of India was responsible for the slaughter of its own Sikh citizens across the country in November 1984. Indian officials and police officers led the way in the rape, torture and murder of thousands of Sikhs just a few miles from the prime minister’s residence. Even today, Christians, Muslims, Dalits and Sikhs are at risk. The time has come for the Indian government to admit its culpability and make a commitment to protect all of India’s minority communities.”

Gogi’s family has been traveling throughout North America to speak for his release. In March, his 17-year-old son, Sahib, spoke at a press conference in his father’s hometown of Lathrop. The following week, community leaders from Stockton Gurdwara and West Sacramento Gurdwara hosted a press conference for Gogi in West Sacramento. The event was covered by CBS Channel 13 news. Gogi’s local paper, The Manteca Bulletin, has also reported on his imprisonment.