The resilience of a Tamil feminist

Sivambikai “Ambika” Sivamoorthy now leads a fulfilling life in Montreal.

Between her family and her work as a community worker, she takes things in a positive and optimistic way. It was these two great qualities that allowed him to go through difficult trials that would have shattered many others.

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From her immigration journey, worthy of a suspense movie, to her community involvement with her family, she tells us her story.

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A first attempt

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“My immigration journey was difficult,” recalls Ambika. Decades ago, she was forced to flee Jaffna, her hometown in northern Sri Lanka, where her community, the Tamils, live. “The civil war between the government and the Tamils was raging at the time,” she explains. Ambika and her compatriots hide in an abandoned bungalow in a palm field, waiting for a fishing boat to take them to southern India.

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A few days later, during a cold and windy night, she boarded, wearing dark clothes to avoid being spotted by the coast guard. When she arrives in India, she is welcomed by good Samaritans who take her in. She's going to stay there for three years. When there is a return to stability in Sri Lanka, Ambika returns to her country.

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Fleeing to Canadian safety

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Back home, the young woman found a job in a call center in the capital, Colombo. The peace is short lived. A colleague is accused of a bomb attack, the police show up at his workplace. Ambika is violently questioned. “The police wanted me to help them identify suspects. They were very abrupt and did not treat me well because I was not comfortable with the majority language, Sinhala. They thought I was pretending not to understand,” she said. She narrowly escaped arrest.

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The incident prompted Ambika's mother to do everything she could to protect her daughter from arbitrary arrest, which would expose her to the risk of sexual violence against women who end up in the justice system. She wants her daughter to immigrate to Canada, so Ambika uses her old passport to travel to Singapore, where her family pays $7,000 to migrant smugglers to get her to Canada. They take her to Malaysia waiting for false papers.

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“On our way to Malaysia, we had to hide in a small compartment under the bus to evade the authorities. There were five or six of us stuck in there! ” she recalls. After an endless wait of several months, Ambika receives a fake Malaysian passport. “The day I left, I put on jeans for the first time in my life to look Canadian,” says Ambika. The smuggler teaches him what and how to answer immigration officers' questions. “I was also put in a wheelchair with a fake foot bandage. I pretended that I had an accident and that I should go back to Canada,” she said. In 1994, Ambika landed in Canada late at night.

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Since it is too late to find an interpreter, he successfully went through customs. She is obviously not saying that she speaks English. Ambika then applied for refugee status, which was granted the following year.

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“My dad was a feminist with his daughters. He wanted us to be independent.”

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Ambika first went to live with her aunt and uncle in Hamilton, Ontario. Resisting the sexist behavior of the latter, she left the place to stand on her own two feet. “When I arrived, my aunt had already lived in Canada for 30 years. She was still a typical Sri Lankan woman and wanted me to be like her,” says Ambika. She remembers her uncle, who tried to control everything and gave her orders, contrary to what she had experienced at home.

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“My dad was a feminist with his daughters. He wanted us to be independent and to take care of our own business,” says Ambika. In a culture where it can be frowned upon for women to go out, come home after 6 p.m. and talk to men, Ambika's father had no objection to all of this.

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When her daughter found herself alone in another country, forced to be strong and independent, she was able to appreciate how precious the feminist values she had been bequeathed to her were.

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A close-knit community of South Asian women

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After a short stay in Toronto, Ambika arrived in Montreal alone in 1996. “I came to visit a friend who lived in Montreal, and I immediately liked the city,” she said of the city, which reminded her of the city, which reminded her of her hometown. Her husband, who remained in Sri Lanka, joined her three years later, after a long bureaucratic battle with Canadian immigration.

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Today, Ambika is a happy woman. At 62, she worked at the South Asian Women's Community Center in Montreal, where she helped women make a living in Quebec. She regularly gives them a helping hand in completing administrative forms and supports them in situations of domestic violence.

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“I love my job. I am so happy to be able to help people, whether they are Sinhalese or Tamils, it doesn't matter to me,” says Ambika, herself a Tamil who has lived through the war. “Sinhalese people really appreciate me and come to me when they need help,” reports the 60-year-old. Her work has allowed her to find a community of women who are like her and to put her own life in perspective. “I I am so thankful to God for giving me this job.

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There I meet a lot of people who are living in difficult situations, who don't speak French or English, who are alone in a new country. My problems now seem tiny! ” says the one who, however, had to go through great trials.

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Read the other portraits in our series for Asian Heritage Month. Diamond converse with Nurmohamed Ibragimov And Mr Wei