India partially resumed its visa services in Canada on Thursday, a month after it suspended its operations following a diplomatic row over allegations that it was behind the killing of a Sikh separatist in the North American country.
India had suspended visa applications for Canadian citizens in September after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that there were "potential links between agents of the Indian government" and Hardeep Singh Nijjar's killing.
The Indian High Commission in Ottawa said services for entry, business, medical and conference visas will be allowed starting on Thursday in a move seen as a major de-escalation by New Delhi.
“After a considered review of the security situation that takes into account some of the recent Canadian measures in this regard, it has been decided to resume visa services,” the High Commission said.
It said emergency services would continue to be handled by the Indian High Commission and the consulates in Toronto and Vancouver.
The entry visa is meant for Indian-origin Canadians and the business visa is for Canadian business travellers and investors in India. Tourist visas have not been resumed for Canadian citizens.
Mr Nijjar, 46, was a leader of the Khalistan Tiger Force, one of the separatist groups seeking the creation of a homeland called Khalistan for the Sikh religious minority in India's Punjab region.
He was designated a terrorist by India in 2020.
Mr Nijjar was shot dead in his vehicle outside a Sikh temple in Surrey in the Canadian province of British Columbia in June.
Ottawa and New Delhi expelled each other’s diplomats and Indians living in Canada were advised to exercise “utmost caution”.
New Delhi had dismissed the claim as "absurd and motivated" and in ensuing diplomatic tension, had closed the visa services temporarily.
India said that High Commission and consulates had faced threats that affected and disrupted their functioning.
It also asked Canada to withdraw dozens of its diplomatic staff by October 20 and threatened to remove their immunity “for all but 21” if they remained.
Forty-one Canadian diplomats left India last week.
Last week, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had said that India will resume issuing visas to Canadian citizens if it "sees progress" in the safety of its diplomats there.
Canada has one of the largest overseas communities of Indian origin with a population of 1.4 million and the highest population of Sikhs, about 770,000, outside their home state of Punjab.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Venom
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed
Rating: 1.5/5
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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Stars:Robert Pattinson
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Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
Labour dispute
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- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
