[Priya and Nades, both Tamils, fled
Sri Lanka amid the conflict and its aftermath, and settled in the rural
Australian town of Biloela in 2014 while awaiting a ruling on their asylum
claims, which were ultimately rejected. Both their daughters were born in Australia,
but the country does not bestow birthright citizenship.]
The country’s government is trying
to deport her to Sri Lanka, where she has never lived, and where Tamil
minorities remain at risk of abuses nearly 12 years after a civil
war ended, according to the United Nations.
For the past couple of years,
3-year-old Tharnicaa, her 6-year-old sister, Kopika, and their parents, Priya
and Nades Murugappan, have been the only residents held in Australian
immigration detention on Christmas Island, a remote outpost in the Indian
Ocean, while lawyers fight the deportation proceedings.
Priya and Nades, both Tamils, fled
Sri Lanka amid the conflict and its aftermath, and settled in the rural
Australian town of Biloela in 2014 while awaiting a ruling on their asylum
claims, which were ultimately rejected. Both their daughters were born in
Australia, but the country does not bestow birthright citizenship.
“This family was given permission
to settle in our community while their claims were assessed. They integrated,
they settled,” said Angela Fredericks, who has campaigned to have the family
return to Biloela. “We don’t want to lose them.”
[His
name was Wayne. Like hundreds of Indigenous Australians, he died in custody.]
Policing Australia’s vast ocean
borders has long been a hot-button political issue here, akin to debate over
migrant crossings of the southern U.S. frontier.
Advocates worry that the conservative
government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants to make an example of the
family to deter other would-be migrants.
The case, laced with dramatic
turns, has captured public attention.
Hundreds attended vigils this week
in Sydney and Perth after Tharnicaa became seriously ill on Christmas Island
and was flown to Perth for emergency care. Within 24 hours, a petition calling for the family to be granted
freedom picked up 100,000 signatures, and now stands at more than 500,000.
Priya said she had pleaded with
authorities on the island about her daughter’s worsening condition for 10 days.
They offered over-the-counter painkillers, she told supporters. At Perth
Children’s Hospital, Tharnicaa was diagnosed with a blood infection and
pneumonia.
Immigration officers are stationed
in the corridor outside her room. After a few days in the hospital, she
improved, although she still wasn’t eating. On a video call with supporters,
she played with a plush version of a cockatoo — a native Australian parrot.
The little girl suffers from
developmental delays attributed to her time in custody. She had four front
teeth removed in 2019 after her poor diet and lack of vitamin D in detention
led to severe decay, supporters say.
[How
a conservative town in Australia set aside politics to rally for a family
facing deportation]
The government has repeatedly
declined to use its power to grant the family visas.
Officials say the harsh stance is
needed to deter would-be asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia — a
perilous journey across vast open ocean.
Advocates question whether that
approach is still necessary. After years of using naval vessels to turn back
boats, Australia has stemmed asylum-seeker arrivals.
“Since those laws were established,
the people smugglers stopped. They need to have faith in their policies,”
Fredericks said. “Australians have this fear about boat arrivals. Of course we
don’t want deaths at sea, but we’re punishing people who’ve survived that
trip.”
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews
on Thursday ruled out resettling the family in the United States or New
Zealand, as has occurred with some other refugees detained by Australia in
offshore camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Those third-country arrangements
were open only to refugees, Andrews said, and the family members were not
legally considered to be refugees.
But a day earlier, Foreign Minister
Marise Payne had said that Australia was looking at resettlement options for
the family and that “the United States and New Zealand are both in the frame.”
On Friday, Gerard Brennan, a former
chief justice of Australia’s High Court, weighed in, saying Tharnicaa’s
suffering “is not an unintended consequence of a general policy; it is cruelty
inflicted on a child deliberately as a warning to others not to come to
Australia by boat without a visa.”
“Tharnicaa has committed no
offence; she presents no danger,” Brennan wrote in a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. “Basic and
important Australian values are at stake. They must not be discarded by a show
of heartlessness towards Australian children.”
Advocates of the family say it
doesn’t have to be this way.
Priya and Nades, who met and
married in Australia, had established lives in Biloela, a town of 6,000
people in Queensland’s mining belt. Nades worked as a cleaner at the local
abattoir and volunteered for a charity. Priya, who didn’t speak much English,
cooked curries for staff at the town’s hospital.
They had been granted a temporary
bridging visa while the government assessed their asylum claims, and were
encouraged to move to the area under a program that directs migrants and
refugees to rural areas with labor shortages.
[Biden’s
‘border crisis’ has little to do with the border]
Before dawn one morning in 2018,
when Tharnicaa was less than a year old, immigration authorities entered the
family’s home without warning. They were given 10 minutes to pack their
belongings, before they were flown more than 1,000 miles to Melbourne under
deportation proceedings.
In 2019, they were ushered onto a
chartered plane bound for Sri Lanka via Darwin, only to be stopped midway by a
last-minute court injunction.
The government has since spent
millions of dollars detaining them on Christmas Island, and fighting in the
courts for their deportation.
Tharnicaa isn’t allowed visitors in
the hospital, besides her mother, who traveled with her to Perth. She has been
overwhelmed by care packages and birthday gifts from as far away as the United
States.
This weekend, Biloela residents
plan to gather in a park to mark Tharnicaa’s birthday with a cake and balloons.
Next year, they hope, she will be home to celebrate with them.
Read more
How
a conservative town in Australia set aside politics for a family facing
deportation
Biden’s
‘border crisis’ has little to do with the border
His
name was Wayne. Like hundreds of Aboriginal Australians, he died in custody
