EDMONTON - “Physical scars heal,” Amarjeet Sohi says. “It’s the emotional scars that you carry on the inside that you have with you for all time.” Most Edmontonians know Sohi as the thoughtful, respected city councillor for Ward 12, a consensus-builder known for his firm, quiet advocacy. Not many know the story of Sohi, political prisoner. In 1988, when Sohi was a young social activist doing volunteer development work in India, he was arrested by authorities in the state of Bihar and accused of being a terrorist. He was beaten and tortured. He was held without charges and without trial for almost two years. Most of that time was spent in solitary confinement. Sohi has made passing mention of it in talks to community groups. But he’s never discussed it in the media. Until now. But with fear of terrorism dominating much of national political discourse, and with the councillor having been acclaimed the federal Liberal nominee in Edmonton-Mill Woods this week, after another would-be candidate was disqualified by the Liberal party, Sohi is ready to confront a painful part of his past. “I really don’t know how you heal,” he says. “I haven’t figured out yet how to forget those memories.” Sohi was born in 1964 into a close-knit Sikh farming family in Punjab. He was 17 when he moved to Edmonton in 1981, sponsored by an older brother. “My level of English was almost non-existent. I couldn’t speak properly, I couldn’t read properly.” He took English as a second language classes, then enrolled at Bonnie Doon High School. In India, his family had never been political. But the early 1980s saw tremendous tension in the Sikh community between fundamentalist Khalistani separatists and moderates who wanted to remain Indian citizens. In 1984, the Indian government attacked Sikhism’s holy shrine, the Golden Temple, to root out extremists. In retaliation, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. Then in 1985 came the Air India bombing, Canada’s worst terrorist event. Sohi and his family deplored human rights abuses by the Indian government, but they opposed fundamentalism. Sohi himself didn’t wear a turban or a beard, didn’t consider himself religious. He joined a local Punjabi literary society. He started working in community theatre as an actor and playwright. As a young man in Edmonton in the 1980s, Amarjeet Sohi was involved in a Punjabi theatre group that opposed both Sikh fundamentalism and human rights abuses by the Indian government. (Photo supplied by Sumeet Randhawa)

“I became more involved, speaking out against extremism,” he says. “Our goal was to oppose Sikh fundamentalism on the one hand, but also to oppose state oppression.” In 1988 at age 24, he returned to India to study with a noted Punjabi playwright and reformer, Gursharan Singh. There, the young actor joined a group of activists advocating for land reform in the impoverished state of Bihar. Powerful landlords controlled the farmland, and landless peasants had few rights. That November, he went to Bihar to help local villagers organize a protest. The night before their rally, police raided the village. “When they saw me, a Sikh, there from Punjab and from Canada, they said, ‘We must have a terrorist here.’” He was taken to the local police station. There began what he remembers as a week of torture. Beatings. Sleep deprivation. Threats to kill his family. He was interrogated around the clock. Sohi says he was saved by the appearance of the district magistrate.

“She arrived to question me, and luckily, she believed my story.” The district magistrate ordered local police to stop the interrogation and send Sohi to a proper hearing. “I think her intervention saved me because at least I was presented in court. I wasn’t allowed to see a lawyer, but at least my existence was documented. They issued a press release to show what a big terrorist they’d arrested. It made national news.” Bihar authorities called Sohi a Khalistani activist, a trained Canadian terrorist who had come to train left-wing Bihar extremists in methods of mass murder. “It has been established, for the first time, that the extremists have international linkage and that they are being armed with sophisticated weapons,” the local director-general of police told The Hindu newspaper. Police claimed that Sohi had been arrested with a gun, live ammunition from Pakistan, and a novel. “I had no guns or ammunition at all,” says Sohi. “But I had a book written by a prominent Indian writer on the partition of India.” Despite that one court appearance, Sohi was never formally charged. “They never charged me with anything because there was nothing to charge me with.” Under India’s Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act, authorities were allowed to hold suspects for up to two years without charges. He was transferred to Gaya Central Prison and thrown into solitary confinement. “It was a small room with a very high ceiling and a little window at the very, very top. That’s all.” There was no bed. He was given two blankets: one to put on the floor, one of cover himself. There was no sanitary system. Prisoners were let out of their cells at intervals to squat over an open trench. “The food was horrible. A couple of chapatis in the morning. Some lentil stew in the evening with a couple of rotis. No vegetables or any meat.” The first weeks were the worst. He felt dazed, with no energy to do more than lie on the floor of his cell. “I was traumatized. I wasn’t in any right frame of mind.” With no contact with the outside world, he wasn’t sure if his family knew he was alive. Finally, after four months, his father and brother were allowed to visit. “My father was a very strong man. I had never seen my father cry before in my whole life. But I saw tears in my dad’s eyes. I saw the pain and the emotion in his eyes that I had never seen before. You forget the physical pain and the torture, but I will never forget that.” Sohi says he hung onto his reason by befriending the guards who stood outside his cell. “They’re human beings as well, so you are able to build a relationship with them. They have a story to tell and you’re looking for someone to talk to. It’s natural to interact.” One of the guards agreed to smuggle a message to the local news media. Sohi announced he was going on a hunger strike to demand better food and access to the library. The press picked up the story. The hunger strike lasted seven days. After that, Sohi was allowed to use money his family sent to buy food from outside the prison. But it was the library that saved him.

“I had no hope whatsoever that I would ever be able to get out,” he says. “What kept me alive, what made a difference, was access to the library and access to the newspapers.” Books brought him companionship. Newspapers brought proof people on the outside knew about his plight and were fighting for his release. In this 1988 photo from the Edmonton Journal archives, Jagdev Sohi, surrounded by his daughter Sandy, his wife Rajinder and his son Jaspal, holds a picture of his jailed brother Amarjeet. Amarjeet Sohi had been arrested on suspicion of terrorism the month before in Bihar, India, where he was working as an activist playwright. (Photo by Larry Wong, Edmonton Journal)

It wasn’t only activists and journalists in India who were writing about Sohi. He was front-page news in the Edmonton Journal. His brother and sister-in-law went to David Kilgour, then a Conservative MP for the Mill Woods area, who took up Sohi’s cause. Because Sohi was not a Canadian citizen, the Indian government refused Canadian diplomats consular access. But the Mulroney government pressed the issue behind the scenes. Amnesty International took up his case, as did a local Edmonton interfaith coalition. Sohi says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, commonly referred to as CSIS, did as much to help free him as anyone. CSIS investigated Sohi’s Edmonton activities, reporting to officials in India he was no threat. But Sohi says his jailers didn’t want to lose face by admitting the big international terrorist they had captured was nothing of the sort. They made up wilder and wilder charges, accusing him of training with Muslim militants in Pakistan, then of being a Maoist agent, then of having links to the Tamil Tigers. Then came a change of government in Bihar. The prosecutor formally requested the case be dismissed, saying “there is a lack of evidence against Mr. Sohi and also his prosecution is against public policy of the state.” The judge agreed. On July 9, 1990, he ordered Sohi “released forthwith.” After 21 months in custody, 18 of them in solitary, Sohi was allowed to go to his parents’ home in Punjab. “My mother. When I came home, she took me into her arms. The only thing she said was, ‘You’re back.’ I dared not look into her eyes because I couldn’t. What I had put her through. What she had gone through. “She was a different woman after that. She never said anything about it, she never complained, she never shared her pain with anyone, but it stayed with her.” Sohi returned briefly to Bihar to thank those who had helped him, including the district magistrate who lost her job because of her intervention in his case. Then he flew back to Edmonton. “I was quite disturbed when I got back,” he says softly. “There was a kind of withdrawal. It took a couple of years for me to put my life back together. “It was my dignity that had been taken away. And when someone takes away your dignity, they destroy you as an individual. I really don’t know how you heal. I haven’t figured out yet, how to forget those memories.”