LONDON: Masked Khalistanis stormed Harrow Vue cinema on Sunday night shouting anti-India slogans, leaving members of the Indian diaspora watching the movie “Emergency” petrified and causing the cinema to halt the screening.
Saloni Belaid, a British Indian, had gone with her friends. The cinema was three quarters full and they were 40 minutes in when “the ruckus started” and masked men and a woman stormed in shouting “Down with India”. “They spread out and went into the rows handing out leaflets about the Sikh genocide,” she said. They didn’t have tickets and just pushed their way past staff. There were many of them. It was really chaotic and scary. Ninety-five per cent of the audience cleared out whilst the Khalistanis were intimidating everyone whereas my friends and I stayed to confront them.”
She said no staff came in to help.
Police arrived within 10 minutes but did not arrest anyone, she said. “They told us they were within their protest rights as long as we were not harmed. Couple of the staff seemed scared and the manager seemed shaken.” Her group asked to continue with film but the manager told them it was cancelled.
“It is terrifying that mob rule succeeds. There was no one to protect us and some had kirpans on them. It’s not nice that you can’t even go and watch a movie in the UK. This was masked men shouting in the dark — we didn’t know what their intentions were. It was frightening.”
Rashmi Chaubey, an Indian citizen from Varanasi, also went with her kids and their friends. She described how when she heard the commotion she turned around and saw masked men in the dark and had no idea what was happening. “A group had moved to the back where the projector is. They started covering it so we couldn’t see the movie, and they were everywhere, at the entrance and exit doors, so then people got frightened in the dark. There were young people and elderly. Some masked men came in front of screen and shouted Khalistan slogans. After the police came, we asked the movie staff to put the film back on but police said it’s a security threat.”
Jasveer Singh, from Sikh Press Association, which is encouraging the protests, said the movie is “anti- Sikh Indian state propaganda”.