Sarah Stephen, Sydney
The immigration department must have changed its mind at the last moment, because Sereana Naikelekele wasn't on the flight from Sydney that arrived in Fiji at 6.10pm on November 6, where Fijian police and airport officials were awaiting her.
Naikelekele, who has spent the past 16 years living in Australia, the last two of those in the Villawood detention centre, was first threatened with deportation back to Fiji at the end of October.
The November 9 Fiji Times, which has given almost daily coverage to Naikelekele's ordeal, spoke to her the day before her scheduled deportation. "I am spending sleepless nights with the thought that I will have to leave my children behind if I am deported. Since my husband has also been detained my children have nowhere to go."
She has five Australian-born children, all of whom are currently in detention with her, despite the fact that Naikelekele's two oldest children, 12-year-old Sally and 10-year-old Jope, are both Australian citizens, as is three-year-old Glen, whose father is a citizen.
Lawyers applied to the Federal Court on November 3 for an injunction blocking her deportation along with two of her children, four-year-old Lomani and six-year-old Mereani. The application succeeded for the children, but failed for their mother.
"It is heartbreaking", Naikelekele told the Sun-Herald from inside Villawood, just before her scheduled deportation on November 6. "Why would the government want to separate a mother from her children? It is a cruel system." She had made a decision to take only her youngest child, three-year-old Glen, with her to Fiji because she knows he could not bear to be parted from her.
"They have a better future here", she told the Sun-Herald. "I come from a very remote island called Nairai where there is little work, schools are poor, and most people don't speak English. It is a terrible choice, but I have to make the sacrifice for my children. They are better off here, but I will miss them so."
If Naikelekele is deported, Lomani and Mereani will remain in care as unaccompanied minors at Villawood and the older children will be placed in the care of relatives or foster parents. Under current laws, the younger children cannot be deemed Australian citizens until they have lived in the country for 10 years, even if they were born here.
On November 3, Naikelekele's lawyer Michaela Byers lodged an appeal under section 48(b) of the Migration Act to have the case reconsidered afresh. But like other appeals for ministerial discretion, the lodgement of such an appeal does not stop the government from being able to deport her.
It is probably the press coverage that has put the government on the back foot. To date, there have been stories in Green Left Weekly, the Australian, the Sun-Herald and on Radio National's Pacific Beat, as well as coverage in the Fiji Times. It would now be deeply embarrassing for the Australian government to try to deport Naikelekele. Byers has been assured that the appeal will be processed, and the immigration minister may use it as a face-saving way of allowing Naikelekele and her five children to stay.
Since joining their mother in Villawood detention centre in October, Sally and Jope have been prevented from attending classes at Macarthur Adventist School, where they have spent the last three years. This is despite repeated appeals by school principal Jill Pearce to allow the children to return.
At the end of October, Sally and Jope's classmates wrote a flood of letters to immigration minister Amanda Vanstone, asking her to release them from detention and let them return to school. One letter read: "Could you please let Sally and Jope out of detention centre at Villawood. They did not do anything wrong. They are Australian citizens and they need their mother to care for them. We miss them at scool."
The four school-age children were scheduled to return to school on November 11. Children at the school had organised a party with food and decorations to welcome the children back, but the immigration department pulled the plug at the last minute, claiming that the necessary paperwork was not complete.
"I find it strange the Australian government's willing to sacrifice three Australian citizens to prove a point just with their mother", Byers told the November 2 Fiji Times.
On November 12, Sally and Jope were released from Villawood into the care of relatives. The release of Lomani and Mereani is expected to follow soon.
From Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2004.
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