Rally 11am Sunday 10 February at Villawood detention centre (Miowera Rd entrance)
Ranjini’s new baby boy, Paari, will grow up in detention for life because she is being held in detention indefinitely due to an ASIO negative security finding.
Ranjini has been held indefinitely in Villawood detention centre since receiving an ASIO negative security clearance seven months ago. On January 15 her new baby boy, Paartheepan (Paari), was born. He will now grow up in detention for life, along with Ranjini’s two other young children.
Although Ranjini, and 55 others also found to refugees, have been declared a security risk by ASIO the government will not tell them why. A High Court ruling in October held that the government cannot keep them in detention simply on the basis of the ASIO negative finding. Yet the government is still dragging its feet on reviewing their cases and they remain in detention with no indication of when any of them might be released.
The detention for life of children, as well as all those on ASIO negative findings (some of them for as long as three years) is a shocking example of the vicious cruelty resulting from the government’s anti-refugee policies. Under the government’s wider detention policies 797 children were locked up in Australia at the end of October and 34 children have been sent to appalling conditions in detention on Manus Island.
Join our protest outside Villawood detention centre to call for the immediate release Ranjini and her children, along with all the ASIO negative refugees, and an end to the policies of detention and offshore processing.
Read more about Ranjini’s story and ASIO negative refugees:
“Born into detention: the plight of Ranjini and Paari” by Anthony Bieniak ABC The Drum
“Wife, mother… security threat” by Michael Gordon The Age
Fact sheet on ASIO negative refugees
