Refugee Ranjini fights indefinite detention in Australia's High Court

(CNN) -- A refugee and mother of three young boys who is being held in indefinite detention in Australia has two days to convince the country's highest court why she should be freed.

 

It's her last shot at overturning a government policy which was recently condemned by a United Nations Human Right Committee report as "cruel, inhuman and degrading."

 

Failure will mean that Ranjini, a 34-year-old Sri Lankan refugee, will continue to be held without trial for the foreseeable future, for reasons that remain a national secret. And she's not the only one.

 

"The core issues in Ranjini's case are common to more than 50 other refugees deemed a security risk and has serious implications for their liberty too," said her lawyer David Manne, who as the executive director of Australia's Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, is representing most of the refugees involved.

 

 

Ranjini is seeking to be released into the community to live with her family, the two young boys she fled with who are now aged seven and nine, her new husband and their eight-month-old child.

"It has caused Ranjini, her boys and her husband profound distress and harm," Manne said. "Every day of detention is another day of damage."

 

CNN is unable to verify details of Ranjini's story with the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) because it will not comment on individual cases.

 

Ranjini's supporters say they suspect her detention has something to do with her former husband, a Tamil who was killed during fighting in Sri Lanka, though that is unable to be confirmed.

 

 

Fleeing Sri Lanka

 

Ranjini fled Sri Lanka in 2008 with her two sons Pirai and Kathir -- then aged four and two -- two years after her husband and their father was killed in the civil war.

They're from the Vanni region, where the United Nations has alleged both the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) targeted civilians, according to a report released in March 2011.

They first went to India, but Ranjini struggled to care for her family so paid a people smuggler to board a boat to Australia.

During what she has described as a "painful" journey, the boat ran out of fuel and was eventually intercepted by the Australian Navy who took the bedraggled and by now desperate asylum seekers to Christmas Island for processing.

Ranjini and her sons were moved to the Australian cities of Perth, then Adelaide before being released to community detention in Brisbane in 2011. In September of the same year, Ranjini and the boys were granted refugee status. Their three-year quest for safety and freedom was over. Or so she thought.

Back in detention

 

In December 2011, Ranjini met a man, Ganesh, who is also from Sri Lanka but was living in Australia as a permanent resident, working as an I.T. consultant in Melbourne.

The Immigration Department gave them permission to marry, and in April 2012 they exchanged vows in a traditional Tamil ceremony witnessed by 200 guests.

However, within one month, Ranjini was back in custody. Immigration officials summoned the family to a meeting to inform them that she had failed a security test and would be detained indefinitely.

She and the boys were flown to the Villawood Detention Center in Sydney. The next day she found out she was pregnant with Ganesh's child.

 

 

 

 

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