Biloela’s Murugappan family reunited in home detention
Recovering asylum-seeker Tharnicaa Murugappan, 4, has left hospital to join her family in community detention in Perth.
Four-year-old asylum-seeker Tharnicaa Murugappan has left hospital to join her family in community detention in Perth, nearly two weeks after she was medically evacuated from Christmas Island with a blood infection.
The girl and her mother, Priya, had been flown to Perth two weeks ago after she became unwell on May 25. On Saturday, Tharnicaa was discharged from Perth Children’s Hospital but will receive ongoing treatment for an infection caused by untreated pneumonia.
She joins her sister Kopika, 6, and parents Priya and Nades Murugappan, who have spent more than three years in immigration detention centres including Christmas Island.
“Thank you to [the] doctors who take care of Tharnicaa in hospital,” said Priya in a statement issued on her behalf. “We hope [that] soon she is much better.”
Also on Saturday, peaceful vigils were held in Perth and other states calling on the Morrison government to release the family from any form of detention. Billboards are planned to go up this week in Liberal-held seats in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast with the same message.
The family’s community detention in a Perth house comes with conditions and rules imposed by the Department of Home Affairs. The family is not able to stay elsewhere, visitors are not allowed to stay overnight and neither parent is permitted to work.
The family’s supporters say they still hope the Australian-born girls and their parents will be able to return to the Queensland town of Biloela, where the Murugappans lived from 2014 to 2018.
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