Diaspora Geopolitics in Toronto: Tamil Nationalism and the Aftermath of War in Sri Lanka

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this research.

Notes

1. Canadian history includes one dramatic exception to the ‘peaceful diaspora’ pattern: the bombing of Air India Flight 182 en route from Montreal to London (with a connection to Delhi) in June 1985 on which 329 people perished just off the coast of Ireland. The attack was Canada’s most fatal terrorist incident, with a majority of the passengers being Canadian citizens. The 2010 Air India Inquiry report stated that Canadian authorities failed to effectively investigate the bombing at the time; only in 2005 did the government initiate an official commission of inquiry into Flight 182 (Singh 2015). The attack was traced to Sikh extremists living in Canada; one manslaughter conviction was made. On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, flying from Tehran to Kiev, was shot down shortly after take-off. The Iranian Government admitted to mistakenly firing two missiles at the passenger plane, killing 176 people, 63 of whom were Canadians; many more had permanent residence or international student status in Canada. Yet this was an attack by the state on civilians, so does not represent violent extremism except by Iranian authorities, and is likely related to the US attack and killing of Major-General Qassim Suleimani, Commander of the Iranian Forces the same week.

2. More than twenty-five years after the Air India bombing, the Canadian Government funded the Kanishka Project, a counter-terrorism initiative which aimed to identify and combat extremism through research, outreach, and related activities (Public Safety Canada 2018). The Kanishka Project, named after the downed Air India plane in 1985, ‘Emperor Kanishka’, was implemented during the tenure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative majority government from 2011–15 (Public Safety Canada 2018b). In this brief note we outline one study commissioned funded by the Government through the Kanishka Project as a point of departure for the original findings and data we collected section of the paper. The study, entitled “The Perception and Reality of “Imported Conflict” in Canada” was an initiative established to better understand terrorism in Canadian society (Monahan, Berns-McGown, and Morden 2014). The study employed two main methods, which generated contradictory findings. A random telephone survey was conducted with 4500 Canadians who were asked if they thought that members of diasporas who immigrate to Canada from conflict zones ‘import conflict’. This is a leading question and a loaded one in terms of survey design. The very act of asking 4500 people this question could be considered a mode of securitising immigrants to Canada, that is, creating a group of highly racialised newcomers as a threat to Canadian society. To plant such an idea in the minds of unsuspecting respondents who may know little about the topic is prejudicial. Some 57% of respondents to this leading question replied in the affirmative. We are concerned that the study securitises the very people who come to Canada from countries affected by war, human rights atrocities, and other conditions of persecution – that is to say, the question about whether they ‘import conflict’ renders them as threats. In contrast to this leading and potentially xenophobic line of questioning, 220 face-to-face interviews and twelve focus groups were conducted with first and second-generation diaspora members, including with a number of Tamil and Sinhalese young people from Sri Lanka. The findings from the interviews were consistent and provided quite the opposite findings: people who immigrate to Canada from war zones come to escape violence and enjoy the rights and freedoms, as well as laws and responsibilities, of life in Canada (Monahan, Berns-McGown, and Morden 2014). Members of these communities of Canadians who come from conflict unequivocally repudiate violence in Canada as a response to, or means of resolving, overseas conflict (Monahan, Berns-McGown, and Morden 2014, 10). Among Tamils consulted, their views of the Tigers were diverse (ibid: 91): “Tamil respondents had differing views of the Tigers. Some were strongly supportive of the group and argued that they had defended the Tamil people with integrity. Others disapproved of many of the tactics employed by the Tigers, but maintain that they were the only presence on the island with the capacity and willingness to protect Tamil citizens against the Sri Lankan state. Still others revile the Tigers, and shared deeply troubling personal stories about violence visited on their families by the Tigers because of political dissent.” Many Tamils added that “ … education is the primary tool of choice to contest the conflict in the future.” There is no armed struggle. That is universally understood. But when the young people wave the LTTE flag it does not stand for armed struggle. It is the sense of Tamil identity that they need. PTSD will intensify if it is not addressed. And these young people have all suffered from racism here – and that exacerbates the pain. The conversation has shifted. It used to be about defeating the rebels but that was accomplished and now it is about destroying our culture completely. (P., Tamil woman, 34, b. Killinochchi, to Canada at 16) There is no physical violence: the community values education and being involved in criminal activity has a stigma attached. The focus is on upward mobility. People just shut down and don’t engage with Sinhalese. But we are in a lull. How long will it last? Are we waiting to see if the Sri Lankan government does anything different? Will there be a post-lull reaction? (T., Tamil woman, 23, b. Colombo, to Canada at 6; italics added) Being Canadian means being away from that brutality and violence … Why hate the Sinhalese people? They are just people too. What is the point? That is the trouble. Sinhalese people have been affected as well. (N., Tamil woman, 30, b. eastern province, to Canada at 10: italics added). The common element of all my friends is that being Canadian is very important to us. Our shared recognition of being Canadian gives us the ground to build on. (V., Sinhalese man, 29, b. Colombo, to Canada at 16). These excerpts from the interviews are important correctives and evidence illustrative of the ways in which actual people living in the Tamil diaspora think about violence, inter-ethnic conflict, and living in Canada. They represent a wide range of views – both supportive and critical of the Tamil Tigers. The authors’ observation, based on their findings from the interviews, is that diaspora newcomers to Canada do not ‘import conflict’ as the grey literature contends in its telephone survey. Recall that 57% of respondents responded affirmatively to a leading question about whether newcomers from war zones import conflict when they immigrate to Canada (Monahan, Berns-McGown, and Morden 2014).

3. From the 2009 ship, the Ocean Lady, eight people were deemed inadmissible and received deportation orders, 36 refugee claims were accepted, and 21 claims were rejected. In the MV Sun Sea cases, 22 were ordered deported after being found inadmissible, 230 refugee claims were accepted and 107 claims were rejected. Many claims remain in appeal.

4. One source links the death of a diplomat to one diaspora in Canada: Armenian militants attacked the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa in 1982, killing its military attaché on his way to work (CID 2019).