JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Foreign governments are increasingly trying to silence critics overseas. That includes here in the U.S., where the Justice Department says it has foiled at least four assassination plots in recent years tied to a foreign power. One case involves India. And last week, Indian officials were here in Washington for talks about the alleged plot to target an American activist in New York. NPR's Ryan Lucas recently visited the activist to hear about how having a target on his back has changed his life.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: It is a phone call that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun remembers well. It was June 17, 2023. And after playing phone tag for a day, he and his close aide in Canada finally managed to connect.
GURPATWANT SINGH PANNUN: He told me that he was informed by the Canadian intelligence officials that there is a serious threat to his life, and he might be killed.
LUCAS: On that call, his aide, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, said that assassins were coming for Pannun as well. This conversation is seared into Pannun's memory because of what Nijjar told him, but also because of what happened the following day.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Police say the killing of a man outside a Sikh temple Sunday night appears to have been targeted. They say the victim was the temple's president, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
LUCAS: On June 18, 2023, gunmen shot Nijjar dead in the parking lot of a Sikh temple outside Vancouver. Canadian authorities have arrested four Indian nationals in connection with the murder. Last week, Canada said India's top diplomat in the country and five other diplomats were persons of interest in the case and expelled them. As it turns out, Pannun's life also was in danger.
Five months after Nijjar's killing, the U.S. Justice Department announced it had foiled a plot to assassinate Pannun in New York City. An Indian national was charged in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme. He has pleaded not guilty. And then last week, prosecutors announced charges against a new defendant, a former Indian intelligence official who allegedly orchestrated the plot. Pannun tells NPR the threat to his life came as no surprise.
PANNUN: I have been threatened directly by the Indian Parliamentarians. While sitting in the Indian Parliament, they have stated that we are going to kill Pannun even if we have to do a surgical strike. These are all well documented statements of the government officials.
LUCAS: In particular, he points to a statement Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made several times in recent years, including early this July, to lawmakers in India's Parliament.
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PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI: (Through interpreter) Today, post 2014, India enters your home and kills you, carries out surgical strikes, carries out air strikes.
LUCAS: In Pannun's view, Modi's threat about how India deals with its perceived enemies is directed at people like him. Pannun is discussing all of this at his law office in Queens. Boxes of case files and legal books line the walls. Pannun is a practicing attorney. That work pays the bills. But much of his time he dedicates to the cause of the Khalistan movement, which wants to create an independent Sikh homeland carved out from Northern India. He and his organization, Sikhs for Justice, have been leading a global referendum for independence. This office is the center of his campaign work. Against one wall, he has a green screen set up and cameras.
PANNUN: That's where we make our messages, like, even for the campaign.
LUCAS: Behind his desk, hangs a yellow and blue Khalistan flag.
PANNUN: Yeah. That's where we run our operations right now.
LUCAS: On the wall is a framed picture of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, the holiest site in Sikhism. Pannun and Nijjar first worked together to document the events surrounding the Indian military's attack on the temple in 1984, known as Operation Blue Star, and the government's bloody, nearly decade-long effort to stamp out Sikh separatism. Thousands were killed. The two men then shifted their focus to the future and started the Khalistan referendum campaign. The idea is to have Sikhs around the world vote on the question of creating an independent Sikh state. Pannun has dedicated his life to the campaign. He told his family years ago that his advocacy work would put him at odds with India's government.
PANNUN: That's why when we are talking about assassination attempts and killings and threats, that doesn't come as a surprise to us. That doesn't come as a surprise to the family.
LUCAS: The Modi government has designated Pannun a terrorist for his separatist work, Nijjar too. Pannun rejects the allegation. He says he follows the law and that his campaign is a peaceful democratic process. India's response though, he says, has been to come after him, even trying to kill him. And that has forced Pannun to look over his shoulder.
PANNUN: Hundred percent - that's how I'm going to survive to go to the finish line.
LUCAS: The foiled assassination plot was not a one-off, he says. There are active threats right now against his life. That danger has not forced him to end his advocacy work, but it has forced him to take precautions. At his office, a security team screens visitors with a metal detector. Bodyguards ferry him to and from work. He says he had security before the alleged plot, but it's been beefed up since then.
PANNUN: Today what you see is very, very obvious. And this is a message I'm giving - that I'm not out there to do it on a suicide mode. I'm going to continue campaign, and I'm going to continue to protect myself.
LUCAS: Still, the threat on his life has altered to a degree how he operates. Our meeting is in his office in part because it is secure. I ask whether we could have met in a cafe instead.
PANNUN: Yeah, if we would have known it in advance, maybe we could have gone. I cannot just abruptly take a car and jump in the car and go anywhere. That's what I have been advised by my security details. That's where you get killed.
LUCAS: He's changed his residence several times since the alleged plot was foiled. He doesn't go to restaurants much. He says he hasn't been to the grocery store in years. He gets things delivered, and he's curtailed his on-the-ground campaign appearances. But he's still very active online. He posts videos to Instagram on a regular basis. Some of them show pro-Khalistan rallies. Others are heated challenges against India or Indian officials.
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PANNUN: Sikhs are facing existential threat under these successive Indian regimes.
LUCAS: In this one from last November, he's calling for a boycott of India's national airline.
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PANNUN: And we are going to target India. From Air India to made in India, we're going to ground everything.
LUCAS: Some of the posts are about his late colleague and friend, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. His assassination, Pannun says, has left a hole.
PANNUN: You feel the vacuum, but then you also get the strength and the courage, what Nijjar stood for, for what he gave his life for, for what he has spent the last 15, 16 years with us.
LUCAS: But Pannun also says there is no time to sit back and grieve. There's work to be done, a campaign to run, despite the risks, and he would rather take a bullet in his head, he says, than stop his work for the movement. Ryan Lucas, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIC TUCKER SONG, "FWM (FT. FRE$H)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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