Dear Tamil Canadians - Pierre Poilievre doesn’t care about our communities plight
Pierre Poilievre doesn’t give a shit about human rights violations of QTBIPOC in CANADA and I’m supposed to believe he cares about Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka?
– Please, appa and amma didn’t raise no fool.
With full respect to Tamil Guardian and other Tamil diaspora media, it is a disservice and, quite frankly, an insult to the violence the Tamil people experienced/experience in Sri Lanka when we amplify the words of politicians like Pierre Poilievre without context.
Because right now, Tamil Whatsapp chats are circulating this video/news as if it actually means Pierre cares about Tamils when I promise you, the only thing he cares about is that Canada’s sizeable diaspora of Eelam Tamils vote for him to become Prime Minister one day.
And that makes me sick, because I don’t think our people (both those alive today in the diaspora, in addition to both those that survived and those who were massacred in Mullivaikal in 2009) deserve to be used in this way.
Pierre isn’t going to be the man to bring Tamils the liberation we seek
Because the reality is if Pierre actually cared about what happened to Tamils in 2009 (when his BFF Harper was PM), then we’d see solidarity today with civilians around the world who are facing human rights violations and state-sanctioned violence like the people in Palestine, in Syria, in Tigray (Ethiopia), in Haiti, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Iran, Sikhs in India, Uyghurs in China, in Tamil Eelam, etc., etc.,
Hell, if Pierre actually cared about what happened to Tamils during the Mullivaikal Massacre, wouldn’t we be able to see those same values carry in his work for the human rights of people living in Canada right now?
He’d care about, take action on, and use his power to address issues impacting:
Indigenous peoples, who still experience state-sanctioned violence and discrimination, not to mention an ongoing genocide of women, girls, two-spirit and other people today, or the ripping of Indigenous children from their families that happens to this day,
Black people, who experience state-sanctioned violence and discrimination, in addition to the complete lack of accountability, reconciliation and reparations for Canada’s history of enslavement and participation in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade for 300 years.
Migrants (workers, immigrants, refugees, students, etc.,), who live, work, study and pay taxes in Canada but don’t have status and therefore, their human rights are ignored.
2STNBGN and Queer peoples in Canada whose human rights and freedoms are being challenged and lives are being threatened
or any of the other people in Canada whose basic needs aren’t met or whose human rights are violated despite Canada being a G7 country(??!)
If Pierre cared about human rights - he wouldn’t be the leader of a party known for covert anti-BIPOC legislation under the guise of “fIsCal rEsPonSibIliTy,” he wouldn’t have supported the Ottawa Occupation, he wouldn’t be dubbed a global superstar for the far-right by Alex-freaking-Jones. Pierre wouldn’t have used hidden misogynistic tags on his Youtube videos for years, courting people from the manosphere,
For centuries Tamils, and the larger BIPOC community, have experienced systemic neglect and abuse by the Western/European/ power.
And look, I get why so many of us from the global majority (BIPOC/racialized people), get excited about these videos and statements - we are starved for scraps after centuries of neglect and abuse.
First, it was directly from colonizers, as they extracted and exploited our motherlands for their wealth and power.
Then, when it was no longer financially lucrative to have colonies, they granted “independence,” - which came hand-in-hand with colonial powers intentionally ensuring that the country they were exiting was purposefully left in a state of social, economic and political instability, a perfect storm for what would follow for the majority of these colonies: decades of state-sanctioned violence, human rights violations, abuse of power, political corruption and greed.
Then, when our people in our homelands - like Tamils - experienced violence once again on our doorsteps, we would be neglected by Western leaders and media once again.
And in the rare occurrence they do cover it on the news, it is because things have gotten so bad. It’s not because they got ahead of the crisis by trusting people with lived experience and responding to their calls for action as tensions heighten. The media waits until there is such a large scale of death, desperation, and violence so that their viewers - aka white people - can tune in to be shocked at these uncivilized nations falling to such barbaric and savage violence.
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In 1994, they knew something horrible was going to go down in Rwanda (colonized first by Germany, then mandated to Belgium); they knew where the weapons were; the United Nations had troops on the ground in Rwanda(!!!) and they did nothing to prevent it. One million people were brutally massacred in 100 days.
That, dear reader, is the character, leadership, and priorities of Western Powers and their ‘so-called’ commitment to human rights.
We are so systemically neglected by Western legacy media and Western leaders, that we are understandably desperate for some attention around the violence and discrimination we experienced and experience.
However, for Tamils to celebrate this video by Pierre as a win for the community (#representation) is a mistake, because the only person who wins from this video, including its subsequent media coverage and the sharing of it on our family WhatsApp chats, is Pierre Poilievre.
– Not you, not me, not the hundreds of thousands of Tamils murdered by their government in Muliviakkal in 2009, not the Tamils still suffering in Sri Lanka today, but Pierre Poilievre (a multi-millionaire politician and global superstar for the far-right movement).
And I, for one, refuse to let Pierre or any politician who doesn’t uphold, advocate for or centre the human rights of all people, use the violence that Tamils experienced as a way to score political brownie points with our community.
Amma and Appa didn’t raise no fool.
I end this today with a reminder, an invitation to remember what we all already know – Tamils have been failed by the Western world.
They have fooled us once (colonialism), they have fooled us twice (ignoring us during Black July and Mullivakkal Massacre) – and my question for my beloved Tamil community is: how many more times are we going to let them play us for a fool?
When politicians like Pierre try to leverage our trauma by sprinkling crumbs in our direction, we must challenge them to prove it and demand a comprehensive cultural change - a disruption of the status quo - in Canada.
We must demand that the human rights of all people in Canada - a place Canadian politicians actually have direct influence and power over - be upheld immediately.
Because the only version of Canada that truly cares about what happened and is happening to Tamils in Sri Lanka, is a Canada that unequivocally upholds the human rights of everyone living within it’s borders.
It is that Canada and only that Canada that will meaningfully advocate for the human rights of our people back home in Sri Lanka.
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This means Tamils (and the larger BIPOC community) must stop fighting for the liberation of our people in silos and start showing up in solidarity with each other (if we can’t do that for each other, then how can we expect others?).
We must normalize solidarity amongst others who have experienced systemic neglect - we don’t have to be experts on their experiences; we just have to trust that in the same way, we feel for our people in Sri Lanka, that they feel for their lived, community and ancestral experience too.
We, as Tamil Canadians need to understand that the liberation of Indigenous peoples and Black peoples in Canada is intrinsically linked to the liberation of Tamils in Sri Lanka –and we need to show up in solidarity (vote, shop, hire, donate, —everything we wish was done for our people in Sri Lanka) with the Black and Indigenous peoples here in Canada.
We must build coalitions with other immigrant diasporas, because a Canada that cares for the human rights of the people in Sudan, Punjab, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Ethiopia, Haiti, Syria, Yemen, is a Canada that will care about Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Breaking out of our silos, and linking our movements for justice to others is not only the right thing to do for fellow human beings (and doing what we wish others had done for Tamils in Sri Lanka in 2009), it is a strategic power move that Western Powers do not expect us to do.
And it actually meaningfully gets us closer to the liberation and justice we seek for Tamils in a way a statement from the leader of the official opposition of the Government of Canada isn’t going to do.
So let’s stop amplifying political lip service from politicians like Pierre in our group chats, and start sharing and calling on our families and friends to show up for the human rights of people here in Canada, and with communities around the world that are experiencing something painfully similar to that of Tamils.
The justice and liberation of our communities are intrinsically linked - and for the first time in history, so many of us from neglected communities are on the same land, together - this is the moment in history our ancestors waited for, so it’s time to act accordingly.
In pursuit of our collective liberation,
Samanta Krishnapillai
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More by Samanta: [May 18] [Ousting of Gota] [Thai Pongal]
Proud Granddaughter of Manonmani, Krishnapillai, Paremarsary and Pathmanathan.
