Canadians shouldn’t forget unresolved terrorist acts committed in this country as they focus on the recent attacks by the Islamic State against France and Russia, speakers at a memorial service for Tara Singh Hayer said Sunday.

Hayer, the outspoken publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times, was shot to death after writing about the suspects in the Air India bombing and agreeing to be a Crown witness against them.

His Nov. 18, 1998 murder remains unsolved and his statements to police about the Air India bombing were not allowed into evidence at the trial of two men who were later acquitted in the 1985 plot that killed 331.

Hayer’s son Dave told the memorial service at Surrey’s Brookside temple that the recent attacks in Paris, as well as the downing of a Russian airliner Oct. 31, should remind Canadians about the Air India bombing and his father’s assassination.

“Regardless of where the terrorism happens, whether it’s in Canada or…in other parts of the world, we must condemn it,” he said.

His father continued to write about the Air India suspects even after he was paralyzed in a 1988 attempt on his life, Dave Hayer noted.

“He said it was most important that we continue to speak out,” he said.

Dave Hayer, a former MLA, said anyone involved in terrorism in Canada “must be held accountable for that including the people involved in my dad’s death.”

West Vancouver MLA Ralph Sultan said the murders of 129 in Paris, as well as the downing of a Russian airliner that killed 224, brought violent and immediate retaliation by the governments of France and Russia.

“We had an act of terrorism which in shear lives lost exceeded in many ways those others,” Sultan said.

“But our response was quite different. We depended on people to speak out about these evil acts and we depended upon the forces of our justice system to catch the perpetrators.

“The person who spoke out most clearly on these evil acts was Tara Singh Hayer.”

Sultan said Hayer was “ultimately murdered for having spoken the truth.”

He said Canadians are indebted to the Hayer family “for having carried on the tradition of freedom of speech, respect for the law, not resorting to violence against violence, but depending on the strong institutions of freedom and democracy we have in Canada to make wrongs right again.”

Former Surrey MP Jinny Sims said Hayer never should have been murdered simply for doing his job as a journalist.

“He was reporting and asking questions about one of the greatest acts of terrorism that has occurred on Canadian soil against Canadians and that is the Air India disaster. And I think all of us still have many, many questions and we are still wondering why today there still has been no justice for the families of those who were killed on that flight.”

Inderjit Singh Reyat, the only man convicted in the Air India bombing, remains in prison serving a sentence for perjury after lying at the trial of his former co-accused.

While police identified suspects in Tara Hayer’s murder with links to the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group, no charges were ever laid. Tara Hayer is believed to be the only journalist ever assassinated in Canada.

kbolan@vancouversun.com

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