Pioson Pen Hero - Tara Hayer

HERO WITH A POISON PEN
- TARA HAYER



Hero with a poison pen: Murdered newspaper editor described as meddlesome troublemaker:
Salim Jiwa. The Province. Vancouver, B.C.:May 23, 1999. p. A24
Author(s):Salim Jiwa
Document types:Feature; Profile
Section:News
Publication title:The Province. Vancouver, B.C.: May 23, 1999. pg. A.24
Source type:Newspaper

Until now, Sikh newspaper editor Tara Singh Hayer, who was gunned down outside his Surrey home last November, has been described by mainstream media as a peace-loving moderate in the style of Mahatma Gandhi.
For his devotion to "tolerance, peace and understanding," he was awarded the Order of B.C. after an attempt on his life in 1988.
But when The Province's Salim Jiwa examined Hayer's writings in the Punjabi-language Indo-Canadian Times, he found the radical views of a militant with little regard for truth and accuracy.
Vancouver lawyer Russ Chamberlain doesn't pull his punches when describing slain Sikh publisher and editor Tara Singh Hayer.
He calls him a troublemaker who had no regard for the truth.
The lawyer had a unique opportunity to look into Hayer's work while defending a Quesnel Sikh who sued Hayer for libel and won almost $60,000 in 1996.
Chamberlain is not alone in his assessment of Hayer. Many Sikhs agree the man described as a moderate was in fact a radical. A peace lover he was not.
They say the "moderate" label was applied by mainstream newspaper reporters who never read a word of what Hayer wrote week after week in his Punjabi-language newspaper, the Indo-Canadian Times.
"He was no moderate; he had no regard for the truth," Chamberlain said. "He was a shit-disturber, he was meddlesome and divided the community, and he held extremist views."
Chamberlain represented one of the victims of Hayer's poisonous pen, Quesnel motel owner Gurnek Singh Sull, who for two years beginning in 1991 was president of the Quesnel Sikh temple.
Sull's world was turned upside down when a report in the Indo- Canadian Times suggested he had taken $7,000 from temple coffers for his personal use.
The report was a lie.
When Sull tried in 1996 to collect the libel award, Hayer transferred his home into his wife's name, saying he was repaying a debt.
Sull eventually collected after Hayer won a settlement with a Punjabi-language newspaper run by rival Sikh separatists in Vancouver.
He says Hayer's unverified article was painful.
It was "total slander," he said. "It was very bad, devastating, but I got justice from the court."
Samples of Hayer's writings over 15 years prove the contention of many Sikhs that he picked fights with people from all walks of life and had little regard for accuracy and fairness. His writings were often vindictive and abusive.
First and foremost, Hayer was a Sikh separatist, and one of the founders of the movement.
He picked his first fights with Sikhs whose only fault was that they did not want to see India split into regions based on religion.
One victim of Hayer's abuse was soft-spoken and respected Punjabi poet Gurcharan Rampuri.
After a visit to India during the tumultuous early 1980s, with Sikh militancy on the rise, Rampuri gave a speech in which he accused the Indo-Canadian Times of supporting the demand for Khalistan.
Based on Hayer's history and his articles, there is no doubt that this was a true statement.
What was astonishing was Hayer's published reaction.
He wrote: "Gurcharan Rampuri, a half-witted, foolish protester who is trying to mouth some rhyming, has decreed that the newspaper, Indo-Canadian Times, is a proponent of Khalistan.
"But his silly eye and many hermaphrodites like him cannot see that we publish news of all classes . . . I ask all hermaphrodites, beggarly frivolous persons and the foolish, that they should but give one example [of bias in favour of Khalistan]."
Rampuri was so offended that he filed a lawsuit, one of at least 18 relating to Hayer on file at the B.C. Supreme Court. About a dozen concern what Hayer wrote about others. The rest were filed by Hayer against people who retaliated in rival newspapers to what he had written about them.
Rampuri, now 70, said he dropped the lawsuit in 1988 after Hayer was shot by a Sikh youth from whom Hayer had extracted tawdry family secrets. The editor published the details because he believed the youth's father, a devoted Sikh, was an Indian government agent.
Rampuri says he was baffled when the mainstream media called the shooting an attack by militants against the voice of moderation. He blames a falling out among militants for the shooting, which left Hayer paralysed from the waist down.
Moderate "was a label of convenience you guys in the media attached to him," Rampuri said.
A Punjabi writers' group, Rampuri among them, wrote to several reporters outlining the role Hayer had played in causing dissent in the community and the glorification of terrorists.
The writers' group said: "Mr. Hayer has been portrayed as a moderate Sikh who opposes violent means to achieve Khalistan, the separate Sikh state. The attack on him is seen as an attack on moderation and democracy.
"Mr. Hayer consistently ridiculed the moderate Sikhs and supported extremist actions and glamourized militant activities.
"For example, the title pages of two recent issues of the Indo- Canadian Times carried full-page colour portraits of two well-known extremist Sikh leaders killed in India. They were portrayed as martyrs by the paper."
One of the pictures was that of Khalistan Commando Force chief Gen. Labh Singh, a notorious terrorist accused of extreme violence by the government of India.
The caption under the picture of the general said he "was martyred during the Khalistan struggle."
The Indian government knew the Khalistan Commando Force as a ruthless terrorist organization. It was notorious for massacring whole families in Punjab and tagging victims with numbers to indicate the death toll.
Hayer once published a letter that accused a Sikh employee of the post office of abusing his sick leave to holiday in India.
The postal employee sued for libel, and won.
The devoted Sikh told the court the lie caused him so much shame that he avoided the temple for a year.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Vickers said the libellous letter to the editor had been doctored and the name of a fictitious person had been signed to it.
"The defendant's publication of an anonymous letter in circumstances which I have described was grossly negligent, irresponsible and lacked journalistic integrity," said Vickers in awarding $30,000 to the plaintiff in January 1994.
Vickers called Hayer's refusal to publish an apology "malicious."
Profile of Tara Singh Hayer.