Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized Sunday for the 1914 Komogata Maru incident in which hundreds of Indians seeking to settle down in Canada were expelled.
Harper was speaking to a crowd of about 8,000 people in Surrey in the western province of British Columbia (B.C.), which has a large east Indian community.
But the local Sikh community refused to accept the apology, saying it should have been made at the House of Commons.
"The apology was unacceptable," said Jaswinder Singh Toor, president of "The Descendants of Komagatamaru Society."
"We were expecting the prime minister of Canada to do the right thing. The right thing was ... like the Chinese Head Tax," said Toor, referring to Harper's full apology to the Chinese-Canadian community in 2006 for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants who came to Canada between 1885 and 1923.
Following Harper's speech, Sikh community leaders asked the crowd for a show of hands on whether or not to accept the apology. Then they announced that the gathering had rejected it.
But Secretary of State Jason Kenney, who was accompanying Harper during the visit, said that "the apology has been given and it won't be repeated."
The Komogata Maru sailed into Vancouver harbor May 23, 1914 with 376 people on board. But the then Canadian government would not allow the passengers to disembark and the vessel sat in the harbor for two months.
Eventually, the boat steamed back to Calcutta where it was met by police, and 20 people were killed as they disembarked while others were jailed. Many of those aboard the Komogata Maru were Sikhs.
In May, the B.C. government issued an apology for the incident.
Harper's apology marks the third such act he has made with the embarrassing parts of Canada's past.
On June 11, Harper apologized to aboriginals who suffered abuse decades ago at Canadian residential schools, calling it "an important evolution in Canada's relationship with our first peoples."
In 2006, Harper issued a full apology to the Chinese-Canadian community for the head tax imposed on Chinese immigrants who came to Canada between 1885 and 1923.
Source:Xinhua
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