Sorry, says Canada 25 years after Air India bombing (Lead)

TORONTO - Accepting “institutional failings of 25 years ago”, Canada Wednesday formally accepted blame for the Air India bombing tragedy and said sorry to the families of the victims for the treatment meted out to them by successive governments.

“We are sorry… your pain is our pain… as you grieve so we grieve,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the victim families at a memorial service here.

Without naming pro-Khalistan elements blamed for the bombing, the prime minister said: “This was not act of foreign violence. This atrocity was conceived in Canada, executed in Canada by Canadian citizens and its victims were themselves mostly citizens of Canada.”

The Air India flight 182 from Montreal to Delhi was blown off mid-air near Ireland June 23, 1985, killing all 329 passengers aboard.

“It was evil, perpetrated by cowards, despicable, senseless and vicious,” he said.

“It should not have happened. It should have not happened,” Harper said, drawing upon the conclusions of last week’s inquiry which blamed the bombing on “a cascading series of errors” by Canada.

“I stand before you to offer on behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, an apology for the institutional failings of 25 years ago and the treatment of the victims’ families,” the prime minister said.

Since almost all victims were Indo-Canadians and Canadian governments till now have been reluctant to embrace it as a Canadian tragedy, Harper added, “Canadians who sadly didn’t at first accept that the outrage was made in Canada accept it now. (But) we wish this realisation had gained common acceptance earlier.”

In a blunt warning to pro-Khalistan extremists, the prime minister said: “It is incumbent upon us all not to reach out to, but marginalise those extremists who seek to import the battles of India’s past here and then to export them back to that great and forward-looking nation (India). We must have none of it.”

There were many moist eyes when Bal Gupta, who heads the Air India Victims’ families Association, said: “The flight 182 victims included over 80 children below 12. Twenty-nine families were completely wiped out. Thirty-two persons were left alone. Six couples lost all their children. Two children - about 10 - lost both their parents.”

He thanked the prime minister for apologising for the tragedy.

After the apology, the victim families - who were given $20 million in an out-of-court settlement - will now get an ex-gratia to be announced soon.

Leaders of all three Canadian political parties, Indian High Commissioner Shashishekhar Gavai, envoys from Japan, the US and Ireland and Justice John Major whose report last week prompted the government’s apology attended the ceremony at the Air India memorial overlooking Lake Ontario.

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)