Tomorrow, it’s a year since Priya and her family were forced to Christmas Island. Before that, they spent eighteen months locked up in a Melbourne detention centre, where baby Isabella was Kopika and Tharunicaa’s only playmate. On Wednesday, Isabella and her Mum Huyen were unexpectedly released from detention.
Today, will you speak up for Priya, Nades and the girls by e-mailing your government Senators?
Like Kopika and Tharunicaa, Isabella is Australian-born. Like Priya, her mum Huyen came to our shores seeking safety. But officials locked them away for over two years, separating them from her husband, Paul.
Priya and Huyen supported each other as they struggled to raise their little girls in Melbourne’s harsh detention centre - a place where no child should be.
When Priya heard the news that Isabella and Huyen had been released, she said: “I’m so happy to hear that Isabella, Huyen and Paul can live together as a family. They have had a very difficult time in detention, every day is hard in detention. But today is a good day for them.”
Tomorrow, it will be a year since guards dragged Priya onto an unmarked plane in front of here little girls in an attempt to force our Biloela family from Australia to danger.
But when a judge ordered the plane to land in Darwin, the politicians sent our family to a Christmas Island detention centre, 5,000km from their Biloela home.
Now, when Priya or Nades take five-year-old Kopika to school, the detention centre guards are with them. At the end of every school day, the guards wait to take her back to detention.
Isabella and Huyen’s freedom shows that politicians and officials have the power to take a common-sense approach. Priya says: “I am waiting in hope that the government will make a similar decision for my family, so we can rejoin our community in Biloela.”
With hope,
Angela