Eelam Tamil Resistance, Futures, and the Reclamation of Space

Presenter: Ambihai Akilan (she/her/அவள்) is a second-generation Tamil-Canadian and graduate of the Sciences Po Paris and the University of British Columbia. A 2025 Wesbrook Scholar, her interdisciplinary training includes degrees in Human Geography, Informatics, Politics and Government, and Law. Currently, she is an Advocacy Officer with People for Equality and Relief in Lanka and Editor-in-Chief of the Tamil Academic Journal. You can find her work in Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Briarpatch Magazine

About the Event:

Eelam Tamil Resistance, Futures, and the Reclamation of Space

This talk examines Eelam Tamil resistance through the analytic frame of PEARL’s* 20th anniversary reunion, a gathering structured around the past, present, and future of struggle against the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist Sri Lankan state. Using this moment as a point of departure, it interrogates how post-independence governance has reproduced colonial logics of rule through militarization, land dispossession, spatial control, and pervasive regimes of surveillance in the Tamil homeland.

Focusing on the present, the talk explores how occupied and heavily surveilled spaces function simultaneously as sites of domination and political creativity. These dynamics are further reflected in the material reshaping of land through infrastructure, architecture, and everyday negotiations under occupation.

Finally, the talk turns toward the future by examining the work of a new generation of Tamil activists who are articulating political imaginaries beyond the nation-state and advancing decolonial solidarities that link Eelam Tamil liberation to global struggles without collapsing difference. Together, these reflections trace how, even under conditions of prolonged occupation, Tamil communities sustain transnational networks, collective memory, and radical visions of belonging and resistance.

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