Tara Singh Hayer

Indo-Canadian Times

November 18, 1998, in Vancouver, Canada

Hayer, publisher of Indo-Canadian Times, Canada's largest and oldest Punjabi weekly, was shot dead in the garage of his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. An outspoken critic of Sikh fundamentalist violence both in Canada and India, Hayer had been partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after an assassination attempt in 1988. Police have linked the man convicted in that attack to the International Sikh Youth Federation and Babbar Khalsa, two militant international organizations working for an independent Sikh homeland in India. CPJ urged Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien to ensure that Hayerís murder is aggressively investigated and wrote to Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asking him to cooperate fully with the investigation.

Medium: Print

Job: Editor

Beats Covered: Politics

Gender: Male

Local or Foreign: Foreign

Freelance: No

Type of Death: Murder

Suspected Source of Fire: Political Group

Impunity: Yes

Taken Captive: No

Tortured: No

Threatened: Yes

Related Articles:

• Journalists under threat: The psychology of sacrifice, September 17, 2009
• Attacks on the Press 2001: Canada, March 26, 2002
• Attacks on the Press 2000: Canada, March 19, 2001
• Archived Documents, 1998, December 31, 1998