Media Release
After a decade of temporary immigration visas and uncertainty, a 34 year old Tamil asylum seeker, Thienushan Chandrasekaram, (aka Thienushan Chand) is pedalling to Canberra to raise awareness of the plight of his cohort with the federal government. This group or legacy caseload is around 12,000 strong.
Averaging 90km per day, Thienushan is 8 days into his bike ride from Brisbane to Canberra.
He is hoping to reach Canberra by the 18th of October (to synchronise with the arrival of 22 refugee women walking from Melbourne).
His family of 8 (mother, brother, his brother’s family, himself) arrived from Sri Lanka via India on 13 April 2013. Thienushan arrived when he was 22 years old, so he is now 34.
Thienushan has worked at Ikea for 8 years. His employers have expressed written support for his ride and quest for permanent resident visas for his family and others in the legacy caseload.
“Every day of the ride has been great. People are kind. I saw a goanna and plenty of roos. It is snake season.”
“My aim is to present my case to the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration not just for me and my family but for whole community of 12,000 like me struggling on bridging visas or no visas.”
In state representative cricket, Thienushan represented Logan city in the 2023 finals. He is also recognised as being among the top all-rounders in the world in specialist cricket, LMS, Last Man Standing. He was chosen to represent Australia, but his temporary visa status prevents him from travelling to international cricket tournaments.
“While Minister Giles is peddling faster visa processing for new applications, Thienushan is pedalling for justice for the 12,000 that have been waiting for the last eleven years, but have been left behind by the Minister,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, “Thienushan is a fine example of the contribution and talent of the victims of fast-track assessments that the Minister is ignoring.”
Thienushan will be in Liverpool, Sydney for a rest day (and available for interview) on Saturday 14 October (from evening of Friday 13 October before leaving early morning Sunday 15 October).
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Time to stop the persecution of legal refugees presently held on Manus, Nauru and in assorted hotels. It is better value to release them into the community with health, housing, welfare and language education to prosper for the benefit of their families and the Australian economy.
There is allegedly a shortage of workers in Australia yet there are about 12,000 legal refugees ready, willing & able to fill many of those vacancies ….. if only the xenophobic racists processing their visa applications would get on with the necessary job.
As a child of migrants, my heart bleeds when i hear stories like this.
What practical purpose is served by this vile neglect?
It only has one purpose, to use as a political weapon. The liberals have form. So much for conservative “christian” values.
Pezzullo, Abbott, Credelin, Morrison and Dutton need to be lined up and paraded as the totally nasty people they are.
In the name of people overboard, australia has been politically scammed. Remember this full scale scam happened before trump. So we are ahead of the stupid curve. All $15 billion of it.