19 Facts About Harsha Walia

Harsha Walia is a Canadian activist and writer based in Vancouver.

Harsha Walia has contributed to over thirty academic journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers.

Harsha Walia was born in Bahrain to parents of Punjabi ancestry.

Harsha Walia later immigrated to Vancouver, Canada and studied law at the University of British Columbia.

In 2001, Harsha Walia co-founded No One Is Illegal, an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist migrant justice movement.

Harsha Walia is a previous member of NOII-Montreal and has assisted the Pakistani Action Committee Against Racial Profiling and Refugees against Racial Profiling.

Harsha Walia 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.

Harsha Walia 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 view of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police's involvement in Jimenez's incarceration, Harsha Walia co-founded the Transportation Not Deportation campaign, which brought about the end of a memorandum of understanding between Transit Police and the CBSA.

Harsha Walia has stated that, despite many government-sponsored messages that Canada is welcoming to refugees, the Safe Third Country Agreement prevents those who reach the Canadian border via the US from claiming refugee status.

For over a decade, Harsha 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.

From 2006 to 2019, Harsha Walia worked as a project coordinator at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, established in 1978 as a safe, community-driven space for women and children in the DTES of Vancouver.

At the DEWC, Harsha Walia facilitated the Power of Women group, a program run for and by women living in the DTES.

Harsha Walia has convened Immigrants in Support of Idle No More and is a supporter of the Defenders of the Land Network, the Indigenous Assembly Against Mining and Pipelines, and the Unist'ot'en Action Camp in Wet'suwet'en territory, which she has visited on multiple occasions.

Harsha Walia was active in the Olympic Resistance Network, which instigated several anti-Olympic actions and demonstrations during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

An active member within Vancouver's South Asian community, with whom she aims to "lift up the reality of what's going on in South Asia in terms of the global landscape of geopolitical warfare," Harsha Walia is on the board of the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy.

On June 30,2021, controversy arose after Harsha Walia retweeted a Twitter news article from Vice World News on the burning of two Catholic churches, adding the comment: "Burn it all down".

Harsha Walia resigned as executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association over the issue on July 16,2021.

In Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, published in February 2021 by Haymarket Books, Harsha Walia further develops her internationalist analysis of migration.