The following speech was given by Barathan Vidhyapathy, from the Tamil Refugee Council, outside the Federal Court hearing into the fate of the Tamil family of Priya and Nades and their two Australian-born daughters, in Melbourne on September 19.
The family, who had lived in Biloela, Queensland, for four years before they were put in a Melbourne immigration detention centre in March last year, is being threatened with deportation to Sri Lanka.
"The new [Sri Lankan] government has made no substantial changes", Tamil National People’s Front leader Gajen Ponnambalam said when addressing a mainly Tamil audience in Melbourne on October 14.
Ponnambalam was referring to the government of President Maithripala Sirisena, who was elected in January 2015, replacing Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The Tamil Refugee Council released this statement on February 28.
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A former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers) deported under duress from Australia on February 22 is being harassed and intimidated, along with his family, by the Sri Lankan state.
Santharuban was handed over to Sri Lankan authorities at Bandaranaike airport, Colombo, where he was questioned for about four hours.
This speech was given at the Refugee Action Collective protest in Melbourne on April 8.
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We are here to protest against the indefinite detention of a group of refugees who are claimed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to be a security threat.
These are people who have been officially recognised as refugees who were at serious risk of persecution in the countries they fled. Yet they are detained indefinitely because of negative ASIO assessments.
