Harsha Walia

Harsha Walia is a Canadian activist and writer based in Vancouver. She has been involved with No one is illegal, the February 14 Women's Memorial March Committee, the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, and several Downtown Eastside housing justice coalitions. Walia served as Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) in 2020. Walia has been active in immigration politics, Indigenous rights, feminist, anti-racist, anti-statist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade. She has also contributed to over thirty academic journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers.

Early life

Walia was born in Bahrain to parents of Indian Punjabi ancestry. She later immigrated to Vancouver, Canada and studied law at the University of British Columbia.

Activism

No One Is Illegal

In 2001, Walia co-founded No One Is Illegal, an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist migrant justice movement. In addition to providing direct support for refugees and migrants facing detention and deportation, NOII campaigns for full legal status and access to social services for all people and works in solidarity with Indigenous self-determination, "anti-occupation", and grassroots anti-oppression movements. Although Walia has worked with NOII groups across Canada, she is primarily associated with NOII-Vancouver. She is a previous member of NOII-Montreal and has assisted the Pakistani Action Committee Against Racial Profiling (Montreal) and Refugees against Racial Profiling (Vancouver).

As a member of NOII, Walia has been involved in several sanctuary campaigns alongside communities and organizers from immigrant and racialized backgrounds. She participated in the campaign to stop the deportation of Laibar Singh, a paralyzed Punjabi refugee; the Let them Free, Let them Stay campaign for incarcerated Tamil refugee claimants aboard the MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea; and the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials, calling for the abolition of security certificates. Together with NOII-Vancouver, Walia organizes the Annual Community March Against Racism, which was initiated in 2008. She also collectively organized a No One Is Illegal, Canada Is Illegal contingent as part the 2010 No Olympics On Stolen Native Land convergence in Vancouver.

In January 2014, Walia and NOII-Vancouver demanded an inquest into the death of Lucia Vega Jimenez, an undocumented Mexican refugee who lived and worked in Vancouver, who died in Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) custody four weeks after being detained. Other migrant justice and civil liberties groups and more than 7,500 petition signers also called for an inquest, which was announced by BC Coroners Service in February 2014 and led to several jury recommendations and an overhaul of CBSA detention practices. In view of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police's involvement in Jimenez's incarceration, Walia co-founded the Transportation Not Deportation campaign, which brought about the end of a memorandum of understanding between Transit Police and the CBSA. Transportation Not Deportation was awarded the 2016 Liberty Award for Community Activism by the BC Civil Liberties Association.

After Donald Trump's election and signing of Executive Order 13769 on January 27, 2017, to establish "extreme vetting" procedures for refugees and immigrants attempting to enter the United States, Walia reported a greater volume of incoming calls to NOII from undocumented migrants in the US seeking to claim asylum in Canada. She has stated that, despite many government-sponsored messages that Canada is welcoming to refugees, the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) prevents those who reach the Canadian border via the US from claiming refugee status. Consequently, she has added, many people cross irregularly into British Columbia, where they are often intercepted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. NOII has urged the Trudeau government to repeal the STCA, although the agreement currently remains in effect. In April 2017, NOII-Vancouver released and distributed Border Rights for Refugees, a pamphlet available in 17 languages with information for those seeking asylum in Canada.

Walia and NOII-Vancouver also worked with the Burnaby School District to change registration procedures in 2017, with the aim to implement a reform that stipulated that all children, regardless of immigration status, have full access to school.

Women's Memorial March

For over a decade, Walia has worked with the February 14th Women's Memorial March Committee, founded in 1992 following the murder of a woman on Powell Street in Vancouver. Led largely by Indigenous women, the committee organizes the annual February 14 Women's Memorial March for women who have died in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES). A 20-year history of the Women's Memorial March is documented in a 2011 short film co-directed by Walia and Alejandro Zuluaga, titled Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown Eastside. The film presents footage of recent and previous marches and centres the voices of women in the DTES, including members of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group, who developed the concept for the film. With their film, Walia and Zuluaga seek to "debunk the sensationalism surrounding a neighbourhood deeply misunderstood, and celebrate the complex and diverse realities of women organizing for justice."