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Film Honours Surrey Sikh Caretaker Nirmal Singh Gill Slain By Nazi Skinheads In 1998.
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Greg Carr
Mar 21, 2023, 5:11:47 PM3/21/23
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Film honours Surrey Sikh caretaker slain by skinheads in 1998
‘This is not an old story, this still is a current story,’ says film director Imtiaz Popat
TOM ZYTARUKMar. 21, 2023 12:00 p.m.LOCAL NEWSNEWS
A premier screening of a new documentary film looking at the outfall of Sikh gurdwara caretaker Nirmal Singh Gill’s death 25 years ago in Newton at the hands of white supremacist skinheads will be held at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 26 at Strawberry Hill Library, a few blocks from where the killing took place.
Imtiaz Popat, who directed the roughly 30-minute film Hate Can Kill, said his film will be featured at the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal from May 1 to May 10 and will also be screened at Vancouver Public Library at 6:30 p.m. May 25, in keeping with Asian Heritage Month.
He said he wanted to launch it close to the gurdwara.
“This is a new version of an older documentary which is more comprehensive, it’s got more analysis,” he said. “I wanted to re-release it so the story is not forgotten.”
Gill, the 65-year-old caretaker of the Guru Nanak Sikh temple on Scott Road, was beaten to death in its parking lot during his late-night watch on Jan. 4, 1998. Five young men who had ties to a neo-Nazi group called the Hammerskins were arrested for second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Two were sentenced to 18 years in prison and the other three were each sentenced to 15 years in prison.
“This happened here in Surrey, in our backyard,” Popat said. “Not much has changed, people are still being killed in places of worship. It happened here in Surrey, it happened in Quebec, in New Zealand and other places, so we have to be vigilant.
“This is not an old story, this still is a current story.”
Imtiaz Popat. (Submitted photo)
The public outcry following the crime was immense. In July 1998, a march against racism in response to Gill’s death drew about 2,500 participants in Whalley. Popat refers to Gill as Shaheed Nirmal Singh Gill, a term applied to a martyr to the Sikh faith.
Two of the five later appealed their sentences in 2001 but Justice John Lambert, of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, rejected their arguments, with fellow Justices Harold Hollinrake and Mary Saunders concurring.
Speaking to the trial judge’s decision, Lambert said, “In my opinion, he imposed fit sentences for this despicable crime cruelly committed by a gang of racial bigots in pursuit of their racist aims.”
Popat now resides in Vancouver but works in Surrey, as does his family. “I’m a Surreyite,” he said. “Spending most of my time in Surrey, my life is in Surrey.”
https://www.surreynowleader.com/news/film-honours-surrey-sikh-caretaker-slain-by-skinheads-in-1998/ Hey self proclaimed Surrey guy why you move to Vancouver?
Sad that was at the time it was assumed one of the rival factions at the temple killed him and both sides bitterly accused each other. The 5 killers should have gotten 25 years to life the prosecution tried but the judge balked we need the death penalty again in this country.
https://www.rediff.com/news/1999/nov/17us1.htm
Would-be 'God' Sentenced For Murder
E-Mail this report to a friend
A P Kamath
"Kill one (Sikh) and you're a murderer. Kill many and you're a conqueror. Kill them all and you're a god," boasted Daniel Miloszewski in a secretly-recorded conversation with an undercover police officer near Vancouver after participating in the murder of an elderly Sikh. He also suggested he was ready to kill again -- and joined some of his friends in declaring that if he was arrested, his friends would blow up the biggest gurdwara in British Columbia.
On Tuesday, Miloszewski heard a tough-talking judge tell him and his accomplices that racism has no place in a multi-ethnic Canada.
Asserting that he was sending a "loud, clear" message that Canada would not tolerate racism, a judge in Surrey jailed five young men -- members of a neo-Nazi group -- for between 12 and 15 years for killing the caretaker of a gurdwara.
This is the first major trial of its kind in British Columbia in which the five, who admitted beating Nirmal Singh Gill to death outside the Guru Nanak gurdwara in January last year, were sentenced under the hate crime law.
Judge William Stewart rejected the defense plea for lenient sentencing at least for two men who regretted the violent act and were now wedded to a non-violent path. But the judge did not accept the prosecution's request to sentence the men to a life in prison either.
"Nirmal Singh Gill is dead simply because he was Indo-Canadian," said Judge Stewart, dismissing the men's claim that the attack was not racially motivated.
"He was attacked because he was different from the accused. It is that simple."
While a large number of Sikhs who had attended the trial had hoped for a life sentence for at least three of the defendants, they said they felt relieved that the trial was over and some justice had been done.
"We were expecting life in prison, but they didn't get it," Balwant Singh Gill, president of the Guru Nanak gurdwara, said. Still, he said, he was satisfied.
"It's enough," he said, adding that he hoped that a message has been sent to the white supremacist groups that racism had no place in Canada.
"Justice has been done," said Tej Singh Phagura, who knew the murdered priest. "Nobody can return Nirmal Singh Gill but for our community, this racism had a very bad effect on us."
Gill who came to Canada in 1989 seeking political refuge was beaten to death while preparing the gurdwara for early morning service. Earlier, he had discovered the men vandalizing cars.
Initially, die-hard Sikhs were suspected in the murder because several gurdwaras had seen violent fights between moderates and their religious foes.
But investigators got tips that the 65-year-old man was killed by men who were either in their late teens or early twenties. Later the men confessed to the murder but at least two of them tried to assert through their lawyers that the crime was not racially motivated.
The judge made it clear that he was convinced Nathan LeBlanc, Radoslaw Synderek, Robert Kluch, Daniel Miloszewski and Lee Nikkel were neo-Nazi skinheads and white supremacists at the time of the murder.
They are "social misfits" who dreamt of creating a whites-only world, "where these small-minded simple men would be in charge," he announced.
British Columbia has nearly 150,000 Sikhs, about 70 per cent of them live in and around Vancouver. The trial was held in a high-security court in Surrey, which has about 42,000 Indo-Canadians (mostly Sikh) among its 300,000 population.
He sentenced Nikkel, 18, and Kluch, 26, to 15 years in addition to the 18 months they have been in custody since their arrest.
Synderek, 24, Miloszewski, 22, and LeBlanc, 27, were sentenced to 12 years.
The five are eligible for parole after serving one-third of their sentences.
The police, who seized racist CDs and Nazi and Aryan Nations paraphernalia from among their possessions, say the men belonged to the White Power racist group.
Prosecutors had presented a case in which police used an elaborate undercover operation to collect evidence, with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police posing as members of a motorcycle gang willing to help the skinheads fund a whites-only race war.
Some of the men recounted how Gill's kada was ripped from his wrist as he lay dying.
After his arrest, LeBlanc wrote to a Texas white supremacist facing the death penalty for dragging an African American man to death behind a pickup truck.
"You should have been given a medal," LeBlanc said in the letter.
The judge called LeBlanc an "unrepentant racist," adding his comments were "an affront to all citizens".
Judge Stewart rejected the defense contention that the men didn't know Gill was Indo-Canadian. Citing the prosecution's case, he said they took pride in the "cowardly" attack.
They were "moronic braggarts" he said.
He said the sentence took into account the young age of the accused, their guilty pleas and the regret expressed by Synderek and Miloszewski. But he could not give them harsher sentencess than that is generally meted out for hate crimes.
"No one, even the most repugnant criminals, must be singled out for special treatment," he noted.
In 1997 the Canadian Forces kicked out a 25-year-old soldier after he was involved in theft at CFB Petawawa and found to have hate literature among his possessions. The reason Nathan LeBlanc was booted from the ranks was because of the theft, not the hate literature. Just weeks after his removal from Petawawa, LeBlanc took part in the fatal beating of Nirmal Gill, 65, on the grounds of a Surrey, BC Sikh temple.
LeBlanc received a 12-year sentence while some of his fellow neo-Nazis involved in the attack received 15 years in prison. The judge called them “unrepentant racists.” Nice that Surrey honoured the dead man with a day this Jan. 4 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/diaspora/canadas-surrey-proclaims-day-in-memory-of-sikh-victim-of-racist-attack-468573
Canada’s Surrey proclaims day in memory of Sikh victim of racist attack
Surrey proclaims Nirmal Singh Gill Day in memory of the caretaker of Surrey-Delta Gurdwara who died in a racist attack 25 years ago
SHARE ARTICLE
Canada’s Surrey proclaims day in memory of Sikh victim of racist attack
Mayor of Surrey, Brenda Locke, presented the proclamation to the relatives of Nirmal Singh Gill. Photo Credit: Twitter/ @HandsRacism
Surrey (Canada), January 8
On the 25th anniversary of the brutal killing of Nirmal Singh Gill by the white supremacists, one of the fastest growing municipalities of Canada made a proclamation to recognize the incident.
Gill, who was a caretaker at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, laid down his life in the line of duty on January 4, 1998, when a group of neo Nazis came to attack the place of worship.
On Saturday, Mayor of Surrey, Brenda Locke, presented the proclamation to the relatives of Gill at a commemorative event held inside the gurdwara. Gill's maternal grandson Paramjit Singh Sandhu came from Toronto to accept the proclamation that declares January 4 as 'Nirmal Singh Gill Day'.
Locke, who also addressed the congregation, was presented with a robe of honour by gurdwara officials for raising her voice against a controversial bill in Quebec that prohibits people from wearing religious symbols in public service.
The law has affected turbaned Sikhs and hijab-wearing Muslim women, besides other faith groups and fuelled racial tensions.
Minister of Education and Child Care Rachna Singh, who has previously served as Parliamentary Secretary for anti-racism initiatives, was also in attendance and presented a certificate recognising the sacrifice of Gill to the temple officials for keeping the history of resistance against racism alive.
Last year, Gill's picture was installed at the seniors' centre located on the temple premises.
Among those who paid tributes to Gill on the occasion was anti-hate educator and former Neo Nazi Tony McAleer.
An author of The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist's Journey from Violent Extremism to Radial Compassion, McAleer has visited the gurdwara in the past to repent the episode.
Although he was never directly involved, he has taken moral responsibility for contributing to the hate through his activities that culminated into the death of Gill. He had apologised to the son-in-law of Gill when the former was visiting Canada in 2015. He had also donated money through the proceeds of the sale of his book to the gurdwara.
Imtiaz Popat, co-founder of Coalition Against Bigotry, also spoke at the event. He has made a documentary on Gill.
The speakers unanimously called upon everyone to contribute to fight back against racism that refuses to die. A message from Gill's daughter in India, Ranjit Kaur, was read out at the event, while Sandhu recalled the memories of the last days of his grandfather in Surrey in a choked voice.
‘This is not an old story, this still is a current story,’ says film director Imtiaz Popat
TOM ZYTARUKMar. 21, 2023 12:00 p.m.LOCAL NEWSNEWS
A premier screening of a new documentary film looking at the outfall of Sikh gurdwara caretaker Nirmal Singh Gill’s death 25 years ago in Newton at the hands of white supremacist skinheads will be held at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 26 at Strawberry Hill Library, a few blocks from where the killing took place.
Imtiaz Popat, who directed the roughly 30-minute film Hate Can Kill, said his film will be featured at the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal from May 1 to May 10 and will also be screened at Vancouver Public Library at 6:30 p.m. May 25, in keeping with Asian Heritage Month.
He said he wanted to launch it close to the gurdwara.
“This is a new version of an older documentary which is more comprehensive, it’s got more analysis,” he said. “I wanted to re-release it so the story is not forgotten.”
Gill, the 65-year-old caretaker of the Guru Nanak Sikh temple on Scott Road, was beaten to death in its parking lot during his late-night watch on Jan. 4, 1998. Five young men who had ties to a neo-Nazi group called the Hammerskins were arrested for second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Two were sentenced to 18 years in prison and the other three were each sentenced to 15 years in prison.
“This happened here in Surrey, in our backyard,” Popat said. “Not much has changed, people are still being killed in places of worship. It happened here in Surrey, it happened in Quebec, in New Zealand and other places, so we have to be vigilant.
“This is not an old story, this still is a current story.”
Imtiaz Popat. (Submitted photo)
The public outcry following the crime was immense. In July 1998, a march against racism in response to Gill’s death drew about 2,500 participants in Whalley. Popat refers to Gill as Shaheed Nirmal Singh Gill, a term applied to a martyr to the Sikh faith.
Two of the five later appealed their sentences in 2001 but Justice John Lambert, of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, rejected their arguments, with fellow Justices Harold Hollinrake and Mary Saunders concurring.
Speaking to the trial judge’s decision, Lambert said, “In my opinion, he imposed fit sentences for this despicable crime cruelly committed by a gang of racial bigots in pursuit of their racist aims.”
Popat now resides in Vancouver but works in Surrey, as does his family. “I’m a Surreyite,” he said. “Spending most of my time in Surrey, my life is in Surrey.”
https://www.surreynowleader.com/news/film-honours-surrey-sikh-caretaker-slain-by-skinheads-in-1998/ Hey self proclaimed Surrey guy why you move to Vancouver?
Sad that was at the time it was assumed one of the rival factions at the temple killed him and both sides bitterly accused each other. The 5 killers should have gotten 25 years to life the prosecution tried but the judge balked we need the death penalty again in this country.
https://www.rediff.com/news/1999/nov/17us1.htm
Would-be 'God' Sentenced For Murder
E-Mail this report to a friend
A P Kamath
"Kill one (Sikh) and you're a murderer. Kill many and you're a conqueror. Kill them all and you're a god," boasted Daniel Miloszewski in a secretly-recorded conversation with an undercover police officer near Vancouver after participating in the murder of an elderly Sikh. He also suggested he was ready to kill again -- and joined some of his friends in declaring that if he was arrested, his friends would blow up the biggest gurdwara in British Columbia.
On Tuesday, Miloszewski heard a tough-talking judge tell him and his accomplices that racism has no place in a multi-ethnic Canada.
Asserting that he was sending a "loud, clear" message that Canada would not tolerate racism, a judge in Surrey jailed five young men -- members of a neo-Nazi group -- for between 12 and 15 years for killing the caretaker of a gurdwara.
This is the first major trial of its kind in British Columbia in which the five, who admitted beating Nirmal Singh Gill to death outside the Guru Nanak gurdwara in January last year, were sentenced under the hate crime law.
Judge William Stewart rejected the defense plea for lenient sentencing at least for two men who regretted the violent act and were now wedded to a non-violent path. But the judge did not accept the prosecution's request to sentence the men to a life in prison either.
"Nirmal Singh Gill is dead simply because he was Indo-Canadian," said Judge Stewart, dismissing the men's claim that the attack was not racially motivated.
"He was attacked because he was different from the accused. It is that simple."
While a large number of Sikhs who had attended the trial had hoped for a life sentence for at least three of the defendants, they said they felt relieved that the trial was over and some justice had been done.
"We were expecting life in prison, but they didn't get it," Balwant Singh Gill, president of the Guru Nanak gurdwara, said. Still, he said, he was satisfied.
"It's enough," he said, adding that he hoped that a message has been sent to the white supremacist groups that racism had no place in Canada.
"Justice has been done," said Tej Singh Phagura, who knew the murdered priest. "Nobody can return Nirmal Singh Gill but for our community, this racism had a very bad effect on us."
Gill who came to Canada in 1989 seeking political refuge was beaten to death while preparing the gurdwara for early morning service. Earlier, he had discovered the men vandalizing cars.
Initially, die-hard Sikhs were suspected in the murder because several gurdwaras had seen violent fights between moderates and their religious foes.
But investigators got tips that the 65-year-old man was killed by men who were either in their late teens or early twenties. Later the men confessed to the murder but at least two of them tried to assert through their lawyers that the crime was not racially motivated.
The judge made it clear that he was convinced Nathan LeBlanc, Radoslaw Synderek, Robert Kluch, Daniel Miloszewski and Lee Nikkel were neo-Nazi skinheads and white supremacists at the time of the murder.
They are "social misfits" who dreamt of creating a whites-only world, "where these small-minded simple men would be in charge," he announced.
British Columbia has nearly 150,000 Sikhs, about 70 per cent of them live in and around Vancouver. The trial was held in a high-security court in Surrey, which has about 42,000 Indo-Canadians (mostly Sikh) among its 300,000 population.
He sentenced Nikkel, 18, and Kluch, 26, to 15 years in addition to the 18 months they have been in custody since their arrest.
Synderek, 24, Miloszewski, 22, and LeBlanc, 27, were sentenced to 12 years.
The five are eligible for parole after serving one-third of their sentences.
The police, who seized racist CDs and Nazi and Aryan Nations paraphernalia from among their possessions, say the men belonged to the White Power racist group.
Prosecutors had presented a case in which police used an elaborate undercover operation to collect evidence, with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police posing as members of a motorcycle gang willing to help the skinheads fund a whites-only race war.
Some of the men recounted how Gill's kada was ripped from his wrist as he lay dying.
After his arrest, LeBlanc wrote to a Texas white supremacist facing the death penalty for dragging an African American man to death behind a pickup truck.
"You should have been given a medal," LeBlanc said in the letter.
The judge called LeBlanc an "unrepentant racist," adding his comments were "an affront to all citizens".
Judge Stewart rejected the defense contention that the men didn't know Gill was Indo-Canadian. Citing the prosecution's case, he said they took pride in the "cowardly" attack.
They were "moronic braggarts" he said.
He said the sentence took into account the young age of the accused, their guilty pleas and the regret expressed by Synderek and Miloszewski. But he could not give them harsher sentencess than that is generally meted out for hate crimes.
"No one, even the most repugnant criminals, must be singled out for special treatment," he noted.
In 1997 the Canadian Forces kicked out a 25-year-old soldier after he was involved in theft at CFB Petawawa and found to have hate literature among his possessions. The reason Nathan LeBlanc was booted from the ranks was because of the theft, not the hate literature. Just weeks after his removal from Petawawa, LeBlanc took part in the fatal beating of Nirmal Gill, 65, on the grounds of a Surrey, BC Sikh temple.
LeBlanc received a 12-year sentence while some of his fellow neo-Nazis involved in the attack received 15 years in prison. The judge called them “unrepentant racists.” Nice that Surrey honoured the dead man with a day this Jan. 4 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/diaspora/canadas-surrey-proclaims-day-in-memory-of-sikh-victim-of-racist-attack-468573
Canada’s Surrey proclaims day in memory of Sikh victim of racist attack
Surrey proclaims Nirmal Singh Gill Day in memory of the caretaker of Surrey-Delta Gurdwara who died in a racist attack 25 years ago
SHARE ARTICLE
Canada’s Surrey proclaims day in memory of Sikh victim of racist attack
Mayor of Surrey, Brenda Locke, presented the proclamation to the relatives of Nirmal Singh Gill. Photo Credit: Twitter/ @HandsRacism
Surrey (Canada), January 8
On the 25th anniversary of the brutal killing of Nirmal Singh Gill by the white supremacists, one of the fastest growing municipalities of Canada made a proclamation to recognize the incident.
Gill, who was a caretaker at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, laid down his life in the line of duty on January 4, 1998, when a group of neo Nazis came to attack the place of worship.
On Saturday, Mayor of Surrey, Brenda Locke, presented the proclamation to the relatives of Gill at a commemorative event held inside the gurdwara. Gill's maternal grandson Paramjit Singh Sandhu came from Toronto to accept the proclamation that declares January 4 as 'Nirmal Singh Gill Day'.
Locke, who also addressed the congregation, was presented with a robe of honour by gurdwara officials for raising her voice against a controversial bill in Quebec that prohibits people from wearing religious symbols in public service.
The law has affected turbaned Sikhs and hijab-wearing Muslim women, besides other faith groups and fuelled racial tensions.
Minister of Education and Child Care Rachna Singh, who has previously served as Parliamentary Secretary for anti-racism initiatives, was also in attendance and presented a certificate recognising the sacrifice of Gill to the temple officials for keeping the history of resistance against racism alive.
Last year, Gill's picture was installed at the seniors' centre located on the temple premises.
Among those who paid tributes to Gill on the occasion was anti-hate educator and former Neo Nazi Tony McAleer.
An author of The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist's Journey from Violent Extremism to Radial Compassion, McAleer has visited the gurdwara in the past to repent the episode.
Although he was never directly involved, he has taken moral responsibility for contributing to the hate through his activities that culminated into the death of Gill. He had apologised to the son-in-law of Gill when the former was visiting Canada in 2015. He had also donated money through the proceeds of the sale of his book to the gurdwara.
Imtiaz Popat, co-founder of Coalition Against Bigotry, also spoke at the event. He has made a documentary on Gill.
The speakers unanimously called upon everyone to contribute to fight back against racism that refuses to die. A message from Gill's daughter in India, Ranjit Kaur, was read out at the event, while Sandhu recalled the memories of the last days of his grandfather in Surrey in a choked voice.
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