The Indo-Canadian community in Surrey, a suburb town in British Columbia, is banding together to create a coalition to combat the menace of gangs that has afflicted this part of Canada for more than two decades. The move has come subsequent to horrified over the gangland-style killing of two teenagers earlier this month.
On the night of June 4, the Surrey unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) received a report of two unresponsive and with a gunshot wound bodies, being found by the roadside in a neighborhood. Both were declared dead at the spot.
But what jolted the community was their identity, 16-year-old Jaskarn Singh Jhutty and 17-year-old Jaskaran Singh Bhangal, both residents of Surrey.
“Things have come to a head, the community is very riled up about it,” Balwant Sanghera, a retired school psychologist, said.
Sanghera has been associated with the South Asian Community Coalition against Youth Violence since 2002 but this incident was a shock. He pointed out that violence related to Indo-Canadian gangs has pervaded the area for more than 20 years but the victims were often gangsters, and mostly in their late 20s and early 30s.
“This has created a different dynamic,” he said, as neither teen was known to have gang affiliations. “We’re all baffled, suddenly they were targeted.”
Gurpreet Singh Sahota, editor of a pair of Punjabi periodicals said “I have been covering these stories for 20 years, but nothing like this happened before, kids of 16 and 17 killed brutally in gang violence,” he said of the motivation behind the new movement. “This was a wake-up call.”
Surrey is the second-largest urban area in British Columbia and the heart of the Indo-Canadian community in the province. Over a quarter of its population is of Indian-origin. As Sanghera explained, with nearby Vancouver turning into a “drug center”, gang activity has afflicted the region.
Among the problems is that gun culture can get glamorized in Punjabi urban music.
Sahota said their group was asking radio stations to bar playing such songs, and also taking them off the playlist of banquet halls and events. The group has asked the Canadian government to deny visas to artists who promote guns and drugs.
The execution of the two youngsters has united the community in the realization that not acting now to repel this threat could leave much more vulnerable.
By Sowmya Sangam
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