(PartiallyPolitics.com) – This past weekend the Indian consulate in San Francisco was set on fire, an incident that was later condemned by Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.
Miller took to Twitter following the incident to note that the U.S. condemns the “vandalism and attempted arson against the Indian Consulate” which had taken place on Saturday. He proceeded to note that this incident much like any violence against foreign diplomats or diplomatic facilities is considered a criminal offense.
Firefighters arrived at the scene at around 2 a.m. on Sunday, as Capt. Jonathan Baxter of the San Francisco Fire Department reported. He noted that the incident at the 500 block of Arguello Boulevard did not result in any damage to any structure and that some trash was the only thing to have caught on fire. Once the firefighters arrived at the scene they put out the fire without making any arrests.
In India, the video footage from the incident was shared by the supporters of an independent Sikh state. Manjinder Singh Sirsa, an Indian politician, in a tweet, condemned the incident which he described as a terrorist attack. He further argued that the Indian Government has always supported the Sikhs even when they face trouble outside of India. He then called for all Sikhs to oppose the terrorist activities “sponsored by ISI.”
This is not the first incident in San Francisco caused by supporters of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state. The Indian consulate had previously been vandalized in March. In part, these recent incidents belong to a wider refueling of the calls for a separate independent Sikh homeland, which were promoted by Amritpal Singh, a separatist leader whose calls for independence have revived memories of the bloody insurgence that had taken place in the 1980s in Punjab. Singh was arrested by the Indian police in April in a town in Punjab.
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