Trudeau vs. Jaishankar on India-Canada diplomatic row

Brut India

"The Indian government is making it difficult for people in India and Canada," said Justin Trudeau after 41 diplomats withdrew from India. Here's how S Jaishankar defended India...

Transcript

00:00The government of India decided to unilaterally revoke the diplomatic immunity of 40 Canadian diplomats in India.

00:11This is a violation of the Vienna Convention governing diplomacy.

00:16Ensuring safety and security of diplomats is the most fundamental aspect of the Vienna Convention.

00:21And right now, that is what has in many ways been challenged in Canada.

00:27That our people are not safe.

00:57The actions that the government of India took this week are themselves contrary to international law.

01:12The government of India decided to unilaterally revoke the diplomatic immunity of 40 Canadian diplomats in India.

01:23This is a violation of the Vienna Convention governing diplomacy.

01:28Ensuring safety and security of diplomats is the most fundamental aspect of the Vienna Convention.

01:33And right now, that is what has in many ways been challenged in Canada.

01:39That our people are not safe. Our diplomats are not safe.

01:42This is them choosing to contravene a very fundamental principle of international law and diplomacy.

01:55It is something that all countries in the world should be very worried about.

02:01And this is putting aside the allegations we made of a serious violation of international law

02:08with the alleged killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil that the Indian government could have been involved in.

02:16This is a matter, putting that aside, that all countries should be concerned about.

02:21There is this whole issue of parity.

02:24How many diplomats there are of one country versus how many diplomats there are of the other country.

02:33Parity is very much provided for by the Vienna Convention, which is the relevant international rule on this.

02:44We stopped issuing visas in Canada because it was no longer safe for our diplomats to go to work to issue visas.

02:53So their safety and security was the primary reason.

02:58We had to temporarily stop the issue of visas.

03:03The government of India decided to cancel, to revoke the diplomatic protections of 40 diplomats working in India.

03:14This is something that has far-reaching consequences for the diplomatic world that I know many, many countries are very worried about.

03:22But it also has very real impacts on the millions of people who travel back and forth between India.

03:30As students, as family members, for weddings, for businesses, for the growing trade ties between our countries.

03:37The Indian government is making it unbelievably difficult for life as usual to continue for millions of people in India and in Canada.

03:48In our case, we invoked parity because we had concerns about continuous interference in our affairs by Canadian personnel.

04:02We haven't made much of that public.

04:06My sense is over a period of time, more stuff will come out.

04:11And people will understand why we had the kind of discomfort with many of them, which we did.

04:18If we see progress there, I would like very much to resume the issue of visas.

04:26My hope would be that it would be something which would happen very, very soon.

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