A 12 months after Kabul assault, Afghan Sikhs lengthy for a settled life 

A 12 months after 25 Afghan Sikhs have been killed within the Kabul gurdwara assault in March final 12 months, United Sikhs, an NGO affiliated to the United Nations, paid tribute to the deceased, and honoured the surviving households in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The assault had taken place contained in the Guru Har Rai Sahib Gurudwara.
Chaibul Singh, 25, was in Ghazni in Afghanistan on March 25 final 12 months when he obtained a name from a member of the family informing him concerning the gurdwara assault. Chaibul’s childhood pal and his uncle have been amongst these killed.
In September 2020, Chaibul got here to India on an emergency flight with eight different relations. They are but to be formally categorized as refugees or residents of India. They haven’t any Aadhaar card, which makes it tough for them to search out jobs. “That one incident changed our lives. While we had shops and homes there, we had to leave everything behind. Now, I work here for Rs 8,000 and my younger brother does a menial job earning Rs 7,000 a month. Lack of documentation and difficulty in speaking Hindi also works against us. We used to speak Pashto or Punjabi in Afghanistan. People find it difficult to understand my Punjabi dialect here,” added Chaibul.
Parvinder Singh Nanda, director, United Sikhs, stated that they had been working laborious to help these households, because it was tough for them to maintain by themselves.

“To even get medical treatment, they require money and some ID proof. We have helped them get passports, assisted with educational assistance and also provided them free medical assistance through the Delhi government. The next step is to seek assistance from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the process for which is under way,” he added.

Surbeer Singh, 39, of Ghazni, Afghanistan, a widely-respected spiritual chief of Sikh Afghan households in Delhi, says, “The Indian government has helped us by bringing us to the country through emergency flights. I know of at least 87 families who came to India, along with mine. We don’t need Aadhaar cards. We need to get resettled.”
Surbeer Singh’s concluding assertion is illustrative and can stick with you. “I cannot get out of my mind the image of the three-year-old girl who was killed in the massacre. There were children, elderly people and women in the Gurdwara that day. The attack left people in shock. While we never feared anything earlier, this incident changed that and we were forced to start looking at other options.”