The following speech was given by Barathan Vidhyapathy, from the Tamil Refugee Council, outside the Federal Court hearing into the fate of the Tamil family of Priya and Nades and their two Australian-born daughters, in Melbourne on September 19.
The family, who had lived in Biloela, Queensland, for four years before they were put in a Melbourne immigration detention centre in March last year, is being threatened with deportation to Sri Lanka.