ENDEAVOUR HILLS HALLAM DOVETON
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/DandenongJournal
Tuesday, 12 September, 2023
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‘Save my son’ A Dandenong mother is pleading for a “compassionate” Australian Government to stop its planned deportation of her only son. Supporters are rallying behind refugee Reeta Arulruban, who has long hoped to reunite with son Dixtan since she desperately fled to SrI Lanka a decade ago. In 2012, she was raped by Sri Lankan security forces in her home, with Dixtan and Reeta’s mother in the next room. She escaped via a scary, hungry and dangerous 17-day boat voyage to Australia. In June 2023, she was finally granted permanent protection with a Resolution of Status visa. Meanwhile Dixtan, now 26, has languished for four years in immigration detention in Broadmeadows. Recently, Home Affairs sent him a “removal notice” that he’d be deported in a week – which supporters put on hold with a legal injunction. Reeta, who visits her “depressed” and “anxious” son every Sunday, says they feel there’s a “death sentence on his head”. “He’s worried about what will happen to him in Sri Lanka. He will be one of the ‘disappeared’ Tamil people who are never found.” The cricket-mad but quiet hairdresser has a handful of close friends at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) centre. He wants to look after his mother, who works in a factory and ails with glaucoma and
Reeta Arulruban with one of the protest placards calling for her son Dixtan to stay with her in Pictures: GARY SISSONS Australia. 357710 asthma. Then and now, Dixtan has little family in Sri Lanka. His father – a suspected Tamil Tiger - had died when government forces bombed a ‘no-
fire zone’, his uncle was long ‘missing’ and his grandfather shot by the military. “He was a very outgoing person before his father was killed in 2009,” Reeta says.
“He turned inwards and was a very quiet boy after that.” Counselling sessions help Reeta a “little bit” to cope with the anguish. “It would be like losing my husband and now losing my son,” she says. She brings her hands together, saying she has a “total belief and hope” that a “compassionate minister will not separate a mother and son”. “The Prime Minister (Anthony Albanese) was brought up with a single mother so he would understand what Dixtan and I are going through. “Every time I see Dixtan, I give him hope. I tell him people are looking after you and trying to keep you here.” When his grandmother died in 2016, he made a bid for an Australian visitor’s visa but was rejected by Home Affairs. In 2019, Dixtan was being harassed by authorities on the streets and at work in the nation’s capital Colombo. He flew from Sri Lanka with a false passport to reunite with his mother. Since arriving at an Australian airport, he’s been in detention. “He was scared what would happen to him as well. It prompted him to leave because he felt unsafe,” Reeta says. “I didn’t know he was coming (with a false passport), he knew I would say no. He was studying a beautician’s course and working in a hair salon – and my plan was to sponsor him eventually. Continued page 8
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By Cam Lucadou-Wells