VANCOUVER POLICE TRY TO END INDO-CANADIAN DRUG MAYHEM

IN mid-January, RCMP officers in Richmond, B.C., discovered the body of an
Asian man in his 20s, his hands tied with duct tape and his body set afire.
To the Mounties on the scene, there was little doubt it was a gang-related
murder, the fifth in as many months in the Vancouver suburb. "This is what
criminals do," Constable Peter Thiessen observed. "This is how they conduct
business."

If so, it is a business that is booming. Vancouver-area police said last
month that at least 50 people have been killed over the past decade in what
they describe as a war between Indo-Canadian drug gangs. Despite the high
tally of victims, the feud has gone largely unnoticed by the general
public. Nevertheless, law-enforcement officers are now mulling the
establishment of a special task force, reminiscent of the group set up to
probe the case of the 50 missing Vancouver prostitutes and drug addicts, to
stop the slaughter.

By the police's own admission, however, ending the killing will be
difficult. Problem number one is the fact that, despite the prevalence of
Indo-Canadian victims and suspects in the crimes, few members of the
tight-knit community are co-operating with police. "We'd like to ask
[Indo-Canadian] community leaders to recognize that this violence can't be
condoned," Vancouver police Detective Scott Driemel said after a mid-April
shoot-up that left two young Indo-Canadian men with minor gunshot wounds.
"They've got to come forward and help us."

That Det. Driemel would so bluntly associate a specific ethnic community
with such a major criminal matter is undoubtedly controversial in these
racially sensitive times--especially so, given the fact B.C.'s
Indo-Canadian community already has a reputation for violence.

In B.C., the vast majority of Indo-Canadians are Sikhs, a religion marked
intermittently over the past few decades by violent feuds. Most recently,
traditionalists and moderates at several Lower Mainland temples fought over
the use of chairs in dining halls.

Earlier, radical Sikhs, seeking independence for Khalistan in India,
brought their fight to Canada. B.C. Sikhs once tried to assassinate a
visiting Indian political leader. More seriously, three B.C. Sikhs,
Ripudaman Singh Malik, Ajaib Singh Bagri and Inderjit Singh Reyat, are
charged with murder in the June 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, which
killed 329 people. The case is now bogged down at the B.C. Supreme Court in
pre-trial motions, details of which the news media are prohibited from
reporting. Jury selection is not scheduled to begin until November.

While the sporadic religious and political violence often involves
first-generation immigrants, the same cannot be said of the drug-related
murders. Instead, it is their sons or the sons of their sons. "We can't
allow this to go on. It makes me feel sick," says B.C. Liberal MLA Dave
Hayer, whose outspoken journalist father, Tara Singh Hayer of Surrey, B.C.,
was murdered in 1998, apparently by pro-Khalistan radicals.

Mr. Hayer says the drug-related violence started in the early 1990s with a
gang led by the Dosanjh brothers, Jim and Ron, who were eventually
murdered. "Then it sort of continued to grow and grow to the point where it
has gotten out of hand." Now, people who have evidence will not go to the
police for fear of being shot by the gangsters.

The politician goes on to suggest the problem is a complex one related to
poor policing ("The police have failed to do their job"), a lax legal
system that "doesn't have many deterrents" and the criminal drug culture.
Mr. Hayer recently contacted the RCMP and community leaders with the aim of
setting up a public forum to get to the root of the problem. "But it's
going to require more than just one individual or one group," he says.
Rather, all three levels of government, the judiciary and young people
themselves need to come to the fore.

One new Sikh immigrant says it will take even more than that. What is
really needed, says Jaskip Wahla of Vancouver, is a change in the mindset
of his fellow Sikhs. A journalist by training, Mr. Wahla, 31, immigrated to
Canada less than two years ago, but says he has seen enough to know where
the problem is centred. "Our community prefers quick justice, rather than
going through cumbersome court proceedings," he has written. "We inherited
this from our culture."

He continued, "If we go deep into this problem, we will see how our parents
are involved in this trouble. If our children have any problems in
school--for instance, bullying--instead of teaching them to diffuse the
situation, we teach them to retaliate. So when children get support and
encouragement from their parents, they feel their actions and the theory of
tit-for-tat are justified. A series of unstoppable events can start right
from childhood, and some take a wrong turn."

Interviewed after his comments were published in a Vancouver newspaper, Mr.
Wahla said poor family life is also to blame for the violence. "They are
after the money, money, money, money all the time," Mr. Wahla says of many
Sikh parents. "And they don't spend proper time with their kids...We give
some free hand to boys, not our girls."

Retired Vancouver police detective Len Miller says he has watched his south
Vancouver neighbourhood deteriorate to the point he now feels he is under
siege by violent Canadians from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. He points
a finger at a political culture that leads all visible minorities to feel
they have special privileges in Canada, and are above the law. "If you're
an ethnic, you can get away with anything," Mr. Miller grouses.

But MLA Hayer answers, "It doesn't matter what the colour [of the
perpetrator] is [or] what the religion is." Rather, it is important to look
for solutions. And that starts with condemning "these types of acts" and
prosecuting those responsible, "severely."

Meantime, the media spotlight was shifted last month to the Vancouver
courts, where Peter Gill was to go on trial April 29 for obstruction of
justice in connection with his sexual affair with juror Gillian Guess
during a 1995 murder trial. Mr. Gill and several others were acquitted on
charges of first-degree murder related to the killings of two gangsters,
the above-mentioned Dosanjh brothers.