RATTAN’S RUMBLE

 

 

#1. VANCOUVER SUN’S ATTACK ON HEED YET ANOTHER SHAMELESS ONE AGAINST INDO-CANADIANS!

 

Vancouver Sun’s LILY-WHITE staff was back at it again last week when they went all out in a shameless campaign to get rid of Solicitor General Kash Heed, an INDO-CANADIAN, apparently egged on by some WHITE cops.

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, Vancouver Sun’s lead story on Thursday, “Heed improperly discussed investigation when he was police chief, e-mail suggests,” was followed up the next day with the story, “No need for Heed to quit, Campbell says,” and an editorial titled “Heed must step aside while the e-mail affair is investigated.”

(On Saturday, the Vancouver Sun did yet another piece on Heed and their disappointment showed through very lucidly in the title: “Investigating Heed under new Police Act would be difficult: commissioner” – that is the Police Complaints Commissioner.)

I wrote in last Saturday’s VOICE: “Heed, in fact, should stay put.

“The Vancouver Sun should have woken up months earlier.

“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 West Vancouver cop that he interfered with the investigation into a senior bank official who was arrested on February 11 on charges of distribution and possession of child pornography by the RCMP’s Integrated Child Exploitation (ICE) unit.”

“I went on to reveal the contents of the email published recently in the North Shore News that the Vancouver Sun reporter referred to in his story on Thursday.

“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 West Vancouver, did not work in that city. The member said that stockbrokers were having a tough time with their reputations these days. The member also said that she didn’t want to interfere.””

 

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 Kamloops – and The VOICE slammed them for their vicious bias and distortions in their reporting.

It is timely this week to bring up that DISGRACEFUL coverage in which the Vancouver Sun ended up making a veritable ass of themselves.

In an article titled “Racist Attack by Vancouver Sun and B.C. Police Federation Boss Against Indo-Canadian Judge?” I slammed Vancouver Sun reporters for “some VERY UNPROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM.”

 

*  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 Vancouver after Vancouver Police were called to the hotel where it was alleged that he was drunk and acting aggressively towards the staff and the patrons. Police had recommended a charge of causing a disturbance to Crown counsel. A special prosecutor, Peter Freeman, a senior Victoria lawyer, was appointed to investigate the matter and he decided that Sundhu would not be charged in the case but would be diverted to an alternative measures program.

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 Williams Lake, was appointed a judge in the Kamloops region in May, 1996.

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 Vancouver Sun reported: “Members of the Williams’ Lake detachment of the RCMP were called to the Fraser Inn Hotel regarding an intoxicated male who was causing a disturbance and refusing to pay for his meal.”

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 Vancouver Sun reporter carried a follow-up, which was in all honesty a CORRECTION – and it was carried NOT on the front page but on PAGE THREE – on Tuesday.

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 Vancouver Sun reported on Tuesday that court documents “PUT THE BLAME FOR THE ASSAULT ON THE POLICE.”

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 Vancouver Sun that the office was already aware of this case.

So here are some very obvious questions one would ask the Vancouver Sun and the cops:

1) Why didn’t the Vancouver Sun reporters verify their facts before rushing to splash such a heavily biased story against a BROWN judge on the FRONT PAGE of their Saturday paper?

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, “Vancouver Sun should offer unqualified apology – and not pass on the blame!” I asked the following question:

“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 Vancouver after praying at a mosque on Wednesday night. He is wearing his traditional clothes and a cap for such religious occasions and so is clearly identifiable as a Muslim.

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.

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 Vancouver Sun taking the notorious lead in this – made life a living hell for many of us, with non-Indo-Canadians asking us stupid questions that implied we were a community of criminals!

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 Vancouver Sun’s coverage has changed dramatically – and one sees more balanced coverage. In fact, one can actually enjoy reading it now!

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 Vancouver on Monday night might be that of an Indo-Canadian because that’s where most Indo-Canadians reside. However, we breathed a gargantuan sigh of relief to learn it wasn’t one of ours!

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 North America at www.voiceonline.com