She was born in Australia and turns 4 on Saturday. The government wants her deported.

By Rachel Pannett,

Family photo

Tharnicaa Murugappan was medically evacuated from an immigration detention camp on Christmas Island to Perth on June 7. She is comforted here by her older sister, Kopika.

SYDNEY — This weekend, a young girl born in Australia will spend her fourth birthday without freedom, watched over by immigration guards.

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.

Family photo

Tharnicaa speaking via a video call with supporters from her bed in a Perth hospital on June 7.

Matt Jelonek

Getty Images

A woman holds a sign with an image of Tharnicaa’s cockatoo toy during a vigil outside the Perth Children’s Hospital on June 9.

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. In the Perth Children’s Hospital, she 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 cockatoo plush toy — 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,” said Fredericks. “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 only open to refugees, Andrews said, and the family were not legally considered to be refugees.

But a day earlier, Foreign Minister Marise Payne had said 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.”

Family photo

Tharnicaa, seen with her mother Priya, turns 4 on Saturday. She has spent almost her entire life in immigration detention.

“Tharnicaa has committed no offense; 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.

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

Source: WP