Key Points
- Tamil refugee Dixtan Arulruban faces deportation to Sri Lanka.
- His mother, a former asylum seeker, is calling on ministerial intervention for Dixtan to remain permanently in Australia.
- Advocates, including Priya Nadesalingam, say it is unsafe for any Tamil asylum seeker to return to Sri Lanka.
Members of the Tamil community and refugee advocacy groups held a vigil in Melbourne on Monday to call on the government to allow Dixtan Arulruban to reunite with his mother Reeta.
For the past four years, Reeta has visited her son every week at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation detention centre.
Dixtan, now 26, has been held there ever since his arrival in Australia on 16 June 2019.
Recently, just weeks after his mother was granted a permanent residency visa, Dixtan received a notice that he would be deported to Sri Lanka in early August.
Reeta, 56, told SBS Tamil this is the latest ‘cruel’ twist in a years-long struggle to be reunited with her only son.
After being able to visit him in detention for the past four years, my heart breaks knowing that the officials have now decided to deport him back to Sri Lanka.Reeta Arulruban
Reeta and Dixtan Arulruban. Credit: Supplied
LISTEN TO
Reeta Arulruban interview with SBS Tamil
02:54
‘Thirteen years of pain’
Reeta arrived in Australia by boat in 2012.
She said she was left with no alternative but to flee after the killing of her husband during the 2009 Mullivaikkal conflict in northern Sri Lanka—the culmination of the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan Army over the establishment of separate state for the Tamil minority.
Sri Lanka's civil war began in 1983 and lasted nearly three decades, killing up to 100,000 people, according to United Nations estimates.
“At the time of his father’s death, Dixtan was just 13 years old,” she said.
She said that she and her son, along with his grandmother, were detained in army internment camps for six months.
A from 2013 documents 'widespread and systematic' acts of sexual violence committed by members of the Sri Lankan security forces from 2006-2012, among other forms of torture and ill-treatment, in official detention centres.
After the trio's release, Reeta alleges that soldiers forcibly entered her home and subjected her to sexual assault while her son and mother remained in another room.
Reeta said that, driven by an “unwavering determination to find safety”, she left her son under the care of his grandmother and fled to Australia in 2012.
While Dixtan was expected to follow his mother at a later date, the passing of his grandmother in 2016 left him without any immediate family in Sri Lanka.
Supporters gather in Melbourne for a vigil for Dixtan Arulruban. Credit: Supplied
‘Challenge after challenge’
Reeta said that by the time she was granted a protection visa in 2016, her son was no longer considered a dependent child.
That year, she tried to sponsor Dixtan under the Sponsored Family Stream Visitor (Subclass 600) Visa, only to face rejection.
Then, when he was 22, Dixtan travelled to Australia in 2019 using fraudulent travel documents.
Upon arrival, he was placed in immigration detention, where he has remained for nearly four years.
Despite seeking a merit review with the Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT) and pursuing judicial reviews at various levels, his applications for asylum have been dismissed.
In late 2022, a request for ministerial intervention, submitted through Carina Ford Immigration Lawyers, failed to receive consideration by the minister.
In a last-ditch effort, an injunction to prevent Dixtan’s removal was filed in the Federal Court on June 23, 2023.
Monday vigil in Melbourne in support of Dixtan Arulruban. Credit: Supplied
Community rallying
Reeta, along with the Tamil Refugee Council, is calling on Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to reconsider the deportation of Dixtan and grant him a visa that would allow him to stay.
Ministerial intervention only occurs in a relatively small number of cases with exceptional circumstances, where the minister considers it to be in the public interest to do so.
Kalyani Inkapumar, Tamil Refugee Council's NSW Coordinator, said Dixtan’s impending deportation is causing “immense devastation within the community”.
Reeta's only child, the last remaining member of her immediate family, who has been unjustly detained for years without charge by the Australian government, now faces deportation into the hands of those who took her husband's life.Kalyani Inkapumar, Tamil Refugee Council's NSW Coordinator
Last year, , a Tamil asylum seeker who endured years of detention alongside her husband and two children, was reunited with the Biloela community in Australia.
Following her own harrowing, high-profile case, Priya is now advocating for the release of Dixtan, citing the uncertainty Tamils face in Sri Lanka.
“Tamils in Sri Lanka continue to face grave challenges, as successive governments have failed to provide a political resolution to them; these unresolved issues make it unsafe for any asylum seeker like Dixtan to return to Sri Lanka,” Priya told SBS Tamil.
Nadesalaingam family arrives at Thangool Aerodrome, Friday June 11, 2022 Source: SBS / SBS Tamil
When contacted, a spokesperson reiterated the department's stance on visa applications, stating that non-citizens seeking to enter and remain in Australia are assessed individually based on Australia's migration legislation.
"Individuals who no longer hold a valid visa are expected to depart Australia," the spokesperson told SBS Tamil.
