Exclusive: As they prepare for their final hearing,
the only asylum seekers on the island hope they, too, will be soon be
able to return home
Time, for all, passes slowly in detention on Christmas Island.
But for the family of Tamil asylum seekers Nadesalingam and Priya, not the neatly delimited 14 days of quarantine before returning home.
As Christmas Island detention centre’s longest-standing residents, they face, still, an indefinite detention and an anxious wait on an uncertain future.
For Nades, Priya, and their two Australian-born children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, it has been 23 months since they have seen home, in Biloela in Queensland. It’s not known if they ever will again.
On the 21st of this month, days after the last of the quarantined Wuhan evacuees are expected to leave, the family will still be on Christmas Island, and their case will come before the federal court.
The case is, ostensibly, a decision on their youngest daughter
Tharunicaa, whose claim to stay in Australia has never been assessed by
the government or any court. The court hearing is not a reassessment of
the merits of the family members’ claims for protection, rather a
judicial review of the process they have been subjected to. It is the
family’s final legal avenue.
The family’s life on Christmas Island is closely circumscribed. Guards are their ever-present companions.But for the family of Tamil asylum seekers Nadesalingam and Priya, not the neatly delimited 14 days of quarantine before returning home.
As Christmas Island detention centre’s longest-standing residents, they face, still, an indefinite detention and an anxious wait on an uncertain future.
For Nades, Priya, and their two Australian-born children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, it has been 23 months since they have seen home, in Biloela in Queensland. It’s not known if they ever will again.
On the 21st of this month, days after the last of the quarantined Wuhan evacuees are expected to leave, the family will still be on Christmas Island, and their case will come before the federal court.
In the detention centre this week, Nades and Priya’s family has not seen any of those brought from Wuhan and being held in isolation, simply more guards and more trucks.
Twice a week, the family is brought out of the detention centre for a visit to Christmas Island’s Recreation Centre, in the middle of the island.
There, Kopika rides a small bicycle, Tharunicaa plays with a ball. Priya walks laps of the basketball court, while Nades sits. He speaks little.
“It’s very hard for us,” Priya says. “Every day is difficult. But I tell myself I have to be strong, for my children, and believe I will see our home in Biloela again. But some days are very hard.”
Kopika and Tharunicaa have little chance to see children their own age. Tharunicaa has spent more of her life in detention than out of it.
“We are just ourselves, it is not good for the children. They miss having other children to play with. They miss their friends at home.”
Priya has not been to Sri Lanka in two decades, and has no family there any more. But the threat of a forced removal to that country remains a constant worry.
“I don’t know what will happen to us. Some days it is very hard. I worry all the time. But I have to be strong, for them,” she says pointing to her two girls.
It is nearly two years since Border Force officials raided the family’s Biloela home at dawn on 5 March 2018: the morning after Priya’s bridging visa expired, and as she awaited a court hearing set to assess her case.
The family was flown to a Melbourne detention centre, where they were asked to sign documents saying they would voluntarily leave the country.
They then spent 17 months in a detention centre in Melbourne before they were loaded on a plane to be forcibly deported to Sri Lanka.
But a mid-air court injunction, granted in the middle of the night as a plane flew them west towards Colombo, ordered them returned to Australia. They were taken from the plane in Darwin then sent to the Christmas Island detention centre in September, which had been mothballed but then reopened, to great fanfare and at significant expense.
The government employed 109 staff, at a cost of $26.8m, to keep them there.
The United Nations has called for their release from detention, as have Australia’s children’s commissioner and human rights commissioner, but these entreaties have been ignored by the Australian government.
Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam – Priya – had fled Sri Lanka at the height of the violence of that country’s brutal civil war. With her family, she escaped to southern India in 2000. But India is not a party to the refugee convention and exerts intense pressure on Sri Lankan Tamils to return, despite continued persecution of the ethnic minority there, the militarisation of the Tamil-majority north, and Sri Lanka’s unhealed wound of thousands of people still missing.
From limited options Priya chose Australia, arriving by boat in 2013.
Nadesalingam Murugappan – Nades – had arrived in Australia a year earlier, in 2012, leaving the uncertainty and upheaval of the end of the war.
Nades fled, he says, fearing persecution because of his links – as many Tamil men had – to the former separatist army, since defeated, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Former cadre continue to face persecution in Sri Lanka, international observers such as the UN and Amnesty say, and the head of the army at the conclusion of the war, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has just been elected president.
In Australia, Nades and Priya met, married and built a life together. Their daughters were born in 2015 and 2017.
Priya has consistently maintained her assessment – her single chance to present her claim for protection – was flawed and didn’t allow her to present the full facts of her case.
Sitting in the Anglicare office in Biloela, Priya was eight months pregnant when she was interviewed by the department over the phone in February 2017.
"I don’t know what will happen. I only hope. But I want to see home again in Biloela"
The previous day she had been in hospital with a migraine. Connections in the three-way call – between Priya, her migration agent and the department – repeatedly dropped out. Transcripts show key elements of the conversation, including evidence around torture, were not heard by some parties.
Lawyers have also raised concerns that the family had to apply for protection without legal assistance, navigating the complex procedures and detailed forms in a foreign language both were only learning at the time.
But under Australia’s controversial fast-track assessment system introduced in 2014 (but applying to boat arrivals from 2012), there is essentially only one chance for an asylum seeker to make their claim. A claim can’t be revisited because of accidental omission, error, changed circumstances, or the emergence of relevant new information.
The government has been resolute. The minister and department have consistently maintained that the family’s claim for protection was reasonably determined and they could not be offered protection.
“This family’s case has been comprehensively assessed, over many years, by the department, various tribunals, and courts,” the Department of Home Affairs has said.
“They have consistently been found not to meet Australia’s protection obligations.”
An application for ministerial intervention was denied by the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton.
“They didn’t come to the country in the appropriate way, they have not been found to have an asylum claim,” he said.
“And to have changed our policy on this, or to exercise intervention powers on this, would be to send exactly the wrong message to those who are looking to sell tickets to vulnerable people looking to get on boats.”
In spite of the government’s unswerving position, the family’s many allies continue to argue the moral case, that a family that had made a life in Australia, seen children born, friendships formed, and a life established, should be granted Australia’s assistance.
Their case has gathered massive support across the country. Tens of thousands have signed petitions pleading for them to be allowed to return #hometobilo, candlelight vigils and rallies have been held across the country, hoping for a change of governmental heart.
Support has come across the political spectrum. Barnaby Joyce, former deputy prime minister, said the family were “good people” who had built a life in Australia. Conservative commentator Alan Jones said their treatment was “shameful”. Labor, supporters of mandatory detention, said “the Biloela community wants these people … the two little girls are born in Australia”.
In Biloela, it is an even simpler argument: “we want them, we need them, we love them. Bring them home,” friend Angela Fredericks said.
Priya is determined, though some days, she concedes, only barely.
“Every day here is the same. But after here, I don’t know what will happen. I only hope. But I want to see home again in Biloela. I keep thinking about that.”
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