The peak professional body for doctors in Australia has called for the release of the Tamil asylum seeker family held on Christmas Island as they prepare to spend their third holiday period in detention.
It comes after around 700 paediatricians and healthcare workers signed an open letter expressing grave concerns about the harm prolonged detention is having on the development of children Kopika, five, and Tharunicaa, three.
The Australian-born sisters and their parents, Nades and Priya, are the only family group detained on Christmas Island, located about 150 kilometres off the Indonesian coast.
“The Australian Medical Association shares the concerns of these eminent paediatricians and other healthcare workers about the harms being caused to these two young children by being in detention for so long and at such a crucial time in their development,” AMA President Omar Khorshid said on Tuesday.
“The first 2,000 days of life is critical for children, and early childhood experiences have lasting effects. Continued detention is most likely causing these two little girls avoidable developmental harm.”
The family have now spent more than 1,000 days in immigration detention while their case remains in the court system.
Dr Khorshid said he has spoken personally with Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and appealed for the release of the family into the community until their legal case has been resolved.
“The ongoing legal process and associated delays are compounding the harm to these children and prompt resolution of the case one way or the other will be in the interest of all parties, including taxpayers who are funding the extraordinary cost of their detention on Christmas Island,” he said.
In October 2019, the Department of Home Affairs told a Senate hearing it had spent $4.5 million keeping the family in detention, including $2.5 million in detention costs, $1.1 million in travel, and $300,000 in legal costs.
Nades and Priya arrived in Australia separately from Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013 before settling into a new life in the small Queensland town of Biloela, where Kopika and Tharunicaa were born.
In March 2018, the family was removed from Biloela, pending deportation to Sri Lanka, after asylum claims for Nades, Priya and Kopika were unsuccessful.
The family has been in detention on Christmas Island since August 2019, living in a separate facility to hundreds of detainees who are awaiting deportation due to criminal convictions.
They say they are unable to return to Sri Lanka due to the threat of persecution.
Earlier this year, SBS News reported the family was not able to leave the detention centre without being escorted by guards, including when Kopika is taken to school on the island.
The children are also not permitted to visit friends or invite them over to their one-bedroom cabin, where the family shares a bed.
The open letter signed by the hundreds of paediatricians and healthcare workers is addressed to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Health Minister Greg Hunt, Mr Dutton and other federal and state authority figures.
It says the detention of Kopika and Tharunicaa in a remote offshore location contravenes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Australia is a signatory.
The letter also requests the family is returned to Biloela and is allowed to settle permanently in Australia.
The family’s future currently rests on the outcome of a Federal Court case, which is investigating whether Tharunicaa was denied procedural fairness in her asylum application. All other family members have exhausted their options before the courts.
A flood of cards and gifts has been sent to the island in the leadup to Christmas. Tharunicaa, the youngest person in Australian immigration detention, has never experienced a Christmas in the community.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs told SBS News: “The government’s policy is clear; no one who attempts illegal maritime travel to Australia will be settled here.”
“Both adults arrived in Australia illegally by boat. After arriving separately in Australia, they met and married and had two children.”
The family’s claims for asylum have been comprehensively assessed on a number of occasions by Home Affairs and various merits review bodies, as well as being appealed through multiple courts, the spokesperson said.
“At no time has any member of the family been found to be owed protection,” they said.
