Hello, respected members of the committee. Thank you for allowing United Sikhs to speak for Afghan minorities.

We are a United Nations-affiliated international non-profit NGO to empower those in need, especially disadvantaged and minority communities around the world, with humanitarian aid, advocacy and education programs. We have 10 chapters in Asia, Europe and North America. We also have an office in Peshawar, Afghanistan.

Ghazni, Jalalabad and Kabul are the three major cities in Afghanistan where minority families are concentrated in large numbers. United Sikhs has been providing legal assistance and humanitarian aid in these cities for the past many years. Our first case in Afghanistan started in 2010 with Harender Kaur and her daughter, to whom we provided help in taking asylum in Canada with the help of the Canadian government, because her husband was kidnapped and then beheaded.

After that, so many times minorities were attacked brutally. They were forced to pay jeziah. They had verbal and written threats, including ultimatums to leave the country, and social boycotts, not even drinking the water from the fountains in front of their shops and in front of their houses. They were called Kafirs. Kids couldn't go to school. Women and young girls couldn't go out because of kidnapping threats. This was the life they were living in Afghanistan.

Then there was the gurdwara attack in 2020. That was the day when all the NGOs and Afghan Sikhs and Hindus decided to move temporarily to India so that we could bring them to safe places like Canada and the U.S.A. As Balpreet said, a total of 95 families have reached New Delhi, India, from different parts of Afghanistan. United Sikhs and other NGOs are the only help for them. They have no help from the Indian government, and not even their IDs.

Last year United Sikhs started a helpdesk in New Delhi for these families. They getting medical treatment, including special tests as needed; the urgent assistance needed by pregnant mothers in government hospitals; assistance with the life-sustaining needs of newborn babies, including immunization; emergency medical procedures; the facilitation of UNHCR-related issues, such as the issuing of refugee cards and the renewal of cards for previously Afghan nationals in New Delhi; ration distribution to needy Afghan families; COVID-19 rapid tests; and assistance with temporary settlement of Afghan families in India.

What are the challenges they have now? They do not have any identification. If they make any identification, then they cannot get their refugee cards and refugee status. They are just in between. The UNHCR says they came to India on a visa, which is not suitable to get refugee status. These are their challenges. Their kids cannot get education. They have no jobs. They're not getting proper medical treatment.

Their only hope is us—the Canadian government—so I will make this request of the Canadian government: Please stop a cultural genocide.

I will ask Gurvinder Singh to add a few more points, please, and then wrap it up.

Thank you.

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