Tears as family begs minister for mercy
A Tamil couple being held at a hotel in Darwin cried as they begged Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to show mercy and let their family live in safety in Australia.
Priya and her husband Nadesalingam have been holed up at the Mecure Darwin Airport Resort since the early hours of yesterday with their Australian-born daughters after a federal judge dramatically halted their deportation from Melbourne to Sri Lanka.
An urgent court hearing in Melbourne yesterday granted the family a further reprieve, with the federal government banned from expelling them until another hearing next Wednesday.
In a tearful plea during a phone interview with AAP yesterday, the couple implored Dutton to grant them and their children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, a safe future in Australia.
‘‘We are begging him to listen to us. We are scared what will happen in Sri Lanka.
‘‘We want him to give our life back,’’ the asylum seekers told AAP through an interpreter.
Priya said Australian security officers physically carried her onto the flight that left Melbourne late Thursday, causing her injury.
She believes she has a broken or badly sprained wrist but hasn’t been able to access medical care. She also says her shoulder was injured and she suffered bruising.
Priya recounted a distressing flight from Melbourne to Darwin, where the plane stopped to refuel. Her children cried and screamed after she was denied permission to sit with them and her husband.
‘‘It was a terrible time for us. They would not let me see my daughter. I had to sit at the back of the plane. She was screaming for nearly three hours before she fell asleep,’’ Priya said.
When the plane landed, they were taken off the aircraft in compliance with the urgent interim injunction granted over the phone by Judge Heather Riley.
The couple doesn’t deny they came illegally to Australia by boat but, Priya says, they had no other choice if they wanted to escape a civil war in Sri Lanka where insurgents were fighting for an independent Tamil state.
Priya says she witnessed her fiance and five other men from her village burned alive before she fled. Nadesalingam says his body still carries the scars and pieces of shrapnel from a government bomb that exploded during the conflict.
‘‘We are begging him to listen to us. We are scared what will happen in Sri Lanka. We want him to give our life back.’’
They had arrived separately in Australia with the aid of people smugglers in 2012 and 2013. The rest of Priya’s family now lives in India.
Dutton has taken a hard line, saying not a single court, including the High Court, had found in the couple’s favour for them to remain.
‘‘I would like the family to accept that they are not refugees, they’re not owed protection by our country,’’ he told Nine Network yesterday.
He later accused the couple of using social media to garner community support after losing previous legal avenues.
‘‘So they are digging in and they’ve used social media. They’ve got a lot of support online because there are children involved. They want to stay and they will continue to push their argument, their case,’’ he told Adelaide radio 5AA.
The Twitter hashtag hometobilo is currently top trending topic in Australia, as federal Labor and Greens politicians demand the government have a change of heart.
Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter accepts the Queensland town of Biloela – where the family lived before being put in immigration detention last year – wanted them to stay, but that isn’t the primary issue.
‘‘The goodness of people is one consideration,’’ he told Sydney radio 2GB.
‘‘The method of how people come to Australia, and whether they actually meet the criteria for a protection visa, is another one and a more complicated matter.’’
From their Darwin hotel room and two days before Father’s Day, Nadesalingam said he hoped the government would consider the contribution he and his wife had made in Biloela, a community that wants them back, and where he worked in an abattoir.
‘‘We want to go home. We want to go back to Biloela. We want a safe life for our children and for us.
‘‘I believe Peter Dutton has a big heart. I believe, as a father, he can understand my feelings.’’ – AAP