External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that it appears Canada has a problem even if Indian diplomats try to find out about developments in Canada which have direct bearing on their safety and welfare. (IMAGE: REUTERS)
S Jaishankar said that whenever the Indian High Commissioner to Canada is threatened he has to accept it as ‘freedom of speech’.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Monday said there are ‘some very specific issues’ when Canada is concerned while speaking at a convention hosted by broadcaster NDTV and said how comments made by Indian journalists on social media regarding an envoy’s facial expression is termed as ‘foreign interference’.
#WATCH | Delhi: At a Summit, EAM Dr S Jaishankar says “…Sometime ago you would have said we will deal with Canada later, let’s talk about the US. Now for some inexplicable reason, you are saying we will talk about US later, let’s talk about Canada first…To some extent, I… pic.twitter.com/BtNcnetDNc— ANI (@ANI) October 21, 2024
He said that whenever Canada is informed about entities in their nation openly threatening diplomats and Indian leaders, Ottawa responds by saying ‘freedom of speech’.
“When we tell them you have people openly threatening leaders of India, diplomats of India. Their answer is freedom of speech,” Jaishankar said.
Then, without directly referring to India expelling Canadian diplomats, the external affairs minister said: “But if an Indian journalist says the Canadian High Commissioner walked out of South Block looking very grumpy, it is apparently foreign interference”.
“Canadian diplomats have no problem going around collecting information on our military, police, profiling people, targeting people to be stopped in Canada. So apparently, the licence that they give themselves is totally different from the kind of restrictions that they impose on diplomats in Canada,” he said.
India recently expelled six Canadian diplomats and announced that it was withdrawing its High Commissioner in Canada Sanjay Kumar Verma after dismissing Ottawa’s allegations linking the envoy to the probe into the killing of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
In an interview with Canada’s private broadcaster CTV News aired on Sunday, Verma said that Trudeau’s allegations over Nijjar’s killing were based on intelligence inputs rather than concrete evidence.
