The National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT) stands in solidarity with Tamil-Canadian actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as she faces a growing campaign of targeted attacks for publicly expressing her identity as an Eelam Tamil woman and her deep-rooted connection to the Eelam Tamil people.
Maitreyi has previously spoken publicly about Mullivaikkal and the Tamil Genocide. Her words are particularly significant today as excavations at the Chemmani Mass Grave in the Northern Province of the island of Sri Lanka have uncovered 583 sets of human skeletal remains of Tamil infants, children and adults to date.
Chemmani is the largest mass grave uncovered in Sri Lanka to date and stands as one of the clearest and most painful testaments to the genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil people.
For decades, the Sri Lankan state has engaged in the denial and distortion of the Tamil Genocide, challenged efforts to recognize, commemorate and memorialize it, and sought to silence those who speak openly about it, including beyond Sri Lanka, through direct state actions and activities attributed to state agents and affiliated actors.
Against this broader background, the attacks targeting Maitreyi raise serious concerns about similar patterns of denial, distortion, silencing and erasure—this time directed at a young Eelam Tamil Canadian who has used her international platform to speak openly about her identity, her people and the Tamil Genocide.
Published reports have documented a coordinated campaign by Sinhala nationalist social media pages in Sri Lanka to mobilize followers to review-bomb Maitreyi's Netflix film Best of the Best, including through one-star ratings and negative reviews, alongside racist and misogynistic abuse across social media. The scale of this review-bombing activity prompted IMDb to flag the film for "unusual voting activity." These attacks go far beyond legitimate disagreement and appear intended to professionally discredit a young Canadian artist following her public expression of her Eelam Tamil identity, heritage and roots.
The nature and intensity of this campaign raise a broader concern: whether the opposition is simply directed at the words of one young Tamil-Canadian woman or reflects broader attempts to suppress the identity, collective history, lived experiences and aspirations of the Eelam Tamil people. Maitreyi's international prominence also brings greater public visibility to the experiences of the Eelam Tamil people, the Tamil Genocide and their political aspirations.
Attempts to dictate how Eelam Tamil people may identify themselves, reject their connection to their ancestral homeland, dismiss their historical experiences or silence references to the Tamil Genocide go beyond disagreement and contribute to the denial, distortion and erasure of Eelam Tamil identity and collective historical memory.
Canada is shaped and enriched by people and communities with roots around the world. Canadians have long proudly expressed their identities, embraced their heritage, honoured the experiences of their parents and ancestors, and maintained connections to their communities and ancestral homelands.
Maitreyi should be afforded nothing less. As a Canadian and a Tamil Canadian, she has the fundamental right to define and express her identity on her own terms, embrace her Eelam Tamil heritage, acknowledge the collective history and experiences of the Eelam Tamil people, including the Tamil Genocide, and speak openly about her ancestral homeland. Her success as a Canadian artist does not diminish those roots, nor should her public platform require her to distance herself from them.
This is also about the generations that follow. Young Eelam Tamil Canadians must be free to understand, embrace and express their identity, heritage, history and connection to their ancestral homeland without others attempting to define their identity for them or intimidate them into silence.
Maitreyi should never be intimidated into concealing, abandoning or redefining her identity because others object to how she understands and expresses her history and roots. Nor should any Canadian face intimidation or attempts to silence them for openly expressing their identity, heritage, history or connection to their ancestral homeland.
The National Council of Canadian Tamils unequivocally condemns the targeted attacks against Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and stands firmly with her. We call upon our fellow Canadians to stand with her and affirm her fundamental right to define and express her identity on her own terms—without intimidation, vilification or attempts to silence her voice.
Thank you,
National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT)