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RATTAN’S RUMBLE #1. I exposed their stupidity and bias in my
lead article in last week’s VOICE - “Kash Heed Shouldn’t Step Down As Solicitor
General, “VOICE” Revealed Controversial Email Contents Last March.” Last week, (On Saturday, the I wrote in last Saturday’s VOICE: “Heed,
in fact, should stay put. “The “The VOICE reported on the contents of
the email in a March 14 story: “COMPLAINT AGAINST KASH HEED COMPLETELY
BASELESS.” “I reported: “Heed has denied an
allegation by a “I went on to reveal the contents of the
email published recently in the North Shore News that the “This is what I wrote back then: “The
VOICE has learned that it was a member of the West Vancouver Police Board that
requested the police’s media spokesperson to highlight the fact that the
accused, though living in This week, Heed told me and Radio RED FM
that the discussion with that police board member took place “AFTER the search
warrant had been executed, AFTER the evidence had been secured and AFTER the
guy was in jail.” So what gives? This ... that Vancouver Sun seems
hell-bent consciously or sub-consciously on targeting prominent Indo-Canadians
and that is why they continue to lose credibility – which is a real shame since
they have so many excellent journalists. The last such concerted major attack was
in 2006 on then Provincial Court Judge Balwinder William Sundhu of It is timely this week to bring up that
DISGRACEFUL coverage in which the In an article titled “Racist Attack by
Vancouver Sun and B.C. Police Federation Boss Against Indo-Canadian Judge?” I
slammed *
First, on October 28, 2006, in a front page story - “Disturbance charge
wasn’t judge’s first, letter reveals” – a Vancouver Sun reporter wrote that
Sundhu “who was arrested in February (2006) for causing a disturbance in a
Vancouver bar faced a similar charge before becoming a judge, a fact not
publicly released in the proceedings that saw him avoid criminal prosecution.” Sundhu was arrested on February 16, 2006,
at the Terrace Lounge in the Four Seasons Hotel downtown That didn’t seem to have sat well with
the WHITE guys in the mainstream media and the police who seemed hell-bent on
humiliating the INDO-CANADIAN judge further. In fact, in February of that year I had
argued that Sundhu should not be charged as he had been humiliated enough for a
relatively minor incident and noted in The VOICE: “When BCTV News on Global
hounded him (did police deliberately inform the TV guys about Sundhu so that
they could humiliate him?) as he was released from jail, he handled the
questions with dignity and honesty. He also showed remorse and humility. … No
one is perfect and Sundhu obviously goofed up. But it wasn't such a huge
screw-up that he should be charged and humiliated any further.” Sundhu, who had his own legal practice in
The Vancouver Sun reported that this new
allegation was revealed in a letter sent by the B.C. Federation of Police
Officers President Don McKenzie to Associate Chief Judge Brian Neal who is
conducting the standard investigation to determine Sundhu’s fitness as a judge
after it was decided a few weeks ago not to charge him in last February’s
incident. McKenzie, in his letter, told the judge
that he was informing him about this incident when Sundhu was a defence lawyer
because his federation of police officers believed that it was “very possible
that the chief justice did not have all the information.” This is what the president of the cops
federation wrote and what the This top cop made further allegations
that when Sundhu was arrested and taken to the police station, he “reached
across the counter and slapped one of the constables in their face.” He went
even further and alleged that the officer in question recalled that Sundhu
issued a death threat. * Then another And to make matters worse, instead of
giving an honest heading stating that the Vancouver Sun and the president of
the cops federation had SCREWED UP ROYALLY, they gave this BIASED heading to
quite obviously MANIPULATE the readers: “Police official stands behind allegation
against judge.” Yes, even after the top cop and the
Vancouver Sun found out that those allegations were FALSE! The But the newspaper chose to highlight the
fact that the top cop would not apologize for his blunder (and his poor
judgement and racism?) and that he “stands by comments he made about Sundhu.” Was this OBJECTIVE and FAIR reporting and
presentation of facts? Or was it heavily loaded against a BROWN
judge by a WHITE reporter and a WHITE cop? The Vancouver Sun reported: “In his
judgment, following a trial in 1990 in which Sundhu was acquitted, the
presiding judge criticized police for “over-reacting” and concluded: “IF
ANYBODY WAS ASSAULTED, IT WAS THE ACCUSED,”” (Capitalization mine). The legal officer for the Office of the
Chief Judge told the So here are some very obvious questions
one would ask the 1) Why didn’t the 2) And when they found they had SCREWED
UP ROYALLY, why did they still choose to SLANT the whole story in favour of the
top cop who gave them this DISTORTED picture? * I wrote all the above-mentioned details
and arguments that week on Wednesday. But on Friday morning (past our normal
Thursday midnight deadline for the week – the pages are normally sent for
printing early Friday morning), the Vancouver Sun in its lead editorial –
"Police federation chief should apologize for his misleading letter"
– actually agreed with me on some things that I had pointed out in my analysis
on Wednesday. I was amused to see the editors of the
paper FINALLY WAKE UP and do something about their blundering journalism pieces
on Saturday and Tuesday. In fact, I was going to send a protest
letter about the SLANTED journalism that was so obvious in Tuesday's report on
Sundhu to the paper's Editor-in-Chief – but then I said to myself: She will
only accuse me of ranting and raving and accuse me of lacking credibility like
she did the last time! So in another write-up titled, “ “WHY DID IT TAKE THESE BRILLIANT
JOURNALISTS SO LONG TO REALIZE THEIR BLUNDER?” Go figure! #2. INDO-CANADIAN ASSAULTED, ROBBED AT
SKYTRAIN STATION IN ‘SAFE’ AREA Back on September 6 last year, I wrote
the following in this column about an assault on a SkyTrain passenger: How stupid can Transit Police get,
really? Here is Transit Police Constable Tom Seaman boasting to a reporter
after three men from Surrey were caught on SkyTrain video surveillance
attacking another young man at Granville Station in downtown Vancouver at 12:30
a.m. on Wednesday that ‘the incident shows that while police officers aren't
always visible, authorities are watching to help keep the system safe.’ Safe? Will someone tell these Transit morons
that the guy who got assaulted was NOT safe. He was beaten up by these scumbags
and let unconscious on the platform. It was only AFTER the damage was caused
that an attendant arrived on the scene. Yes, the cops nabbed the white suspects
at Joyce Station thanks to the surveillance cameras at the stations. But the inescapable fact is that such an
attack would NEVER have occurred IF a Transit cop or attendant had been present
at the platform. When will Premier Gordon Campbell and his
overpaid ministers wake up to this horrible state of affairs? When someone is
KILLED? Well, on July 15 an Indo-Canadian man,
Ravinder Sidhu, was assaulted and robbed of his watch and some gifts that he
had bought for his kid as he waited around 1 a.m. for a bus in the designated
waiting area on the platform at Surrey Central SkyTrain Station. That is supposed
to be the SAFE area that is well-lit and constantly under security cameras’
surveillance and Sidhu reasoned that he would be safer there than at the bus
stop below. He told the media that he kept screaming
for help, but no one turned up. Inally, he had to call the security from the
red phone before someone came to his aid. He quite rightly asked what would
have happened to him if he had been knocked unconscious or stabbed and would
have been in no position to get up and use the red phone? He went public two weeks later to make
sure that some action was taken. Then the public got to learn from the
Transit authorities that NOT ALL the 900 or so security cameras in the SkyTrain
system are constantly monitored! And here all of us were led to believe
that as long as a security camera was pointing in our direction, we were being
watched by our guardian angels. Transit officials say they just do not
have the resources to monitor the complete security camera network. #3. ATTACK ON MUSLIM IS AN INSULT TO ALL
DECENT CANADIANS What on earth is going on? A 59-year-old man heads home on a UBC bus
in east Near the intersection of Kingsway and
King Edward a man suddenly goes berserk, screaming words to the effect that
‘Bin Laden is coming’ and cursing Muslims, and then punches him above his left
eye. Fortunately, the victim, Qasimali Baig, a journalist, wasn’t seriously
hurt. Baig told the media that the driver
stopped the bus and called police. The cowardly assailant took off immediately.
The other passengers, none of whom came to Baig’s rescue, also fled. Vancouver Police said the victim was taken
to hospital for a check-up and then released. The suspect is said to be a white man in
his 40s, though police in their press statement said that witnesses identified
him as Middle Eastern, 30-35 years old. Baig told the media that this was his
first personal experience with racism in his 22 years in Vancouver Police said their Hate Crime
Unit has reviewed the file and believes that this unprovoked attack was
motivated by bias, prejudice or hate against the victim’s identity. Anyone with
information is asked to call police or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477. #4. ONE YEAR AGO: “FEWER INDO-CANADIANS
GETTING KILLED IN GANG VIOLENCE” (Last year at this time, the attention
had shifted away from Indo-Canadian gangsters to others, much to the relief of
the community.) It seems like only yesterday when almost
everyone who was being shot dead in gang violence was an Indo-Canadian. Every
time the police or the media announced that someone had been shot or killed,
Indo-Canadians would prepare themselves for the worst. To make matters worse, the highly biased
coverage of negative news about Indo-Canadians by the white-controlled
mainstream media – with the The VOICE’s continuous attacks on this
type of coverage apparently put some sense into the heads of thee editors of
the Vancouver Sun, whose dubious example the rest of mainstream media tended to
follow (‘The blind leading the blind,’ as the Bible puts it!) The And thank God, its reporters are now
letting readers know that non-Indo-Canadian criminals are more prolific and
powerful than Indo-Canadian criminals. Their coverage of gangs has been pretty
good (apparently with lots of help from Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the integrated
gang outfit.) Just in the past few days, there was a
string of shootings – all involving non-Indo-Canadians. We thought that the
murder in southeast The Province newspaper, reporting on that
murder on Wednesday, carried a list of some of the victims of targeted
shootings this year: only one Indo-Canadian name figured in the list of 13. The
rest were either white guys or East Asians (Chinese or Vietnamese). -Rattan Mall editor@voiceonline.com The BEST READ South Asian column in |
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