Saturday October 11, 2014
Darwin residents Abdi Elmi and Fatuma Ali have been unable to see their son for 23 years. They are now seeking an urgent visitor's visa from the Federal Government to see him before Elmi dies from cancer.
DARWIN grandfather Abdi Elmi wakes up screaming the name of the son he last saw 23 years ago as he and his family fled the bloodshed of war-torn Somalia.
An aggressive form of liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease will take his life in just three months and his dying wish is for the Federal Government to expedite the visa of the son he thought was dead.
Along with his wife, Fatuma Ali, he has been lobbying since 2007 to have Saacid Abdi – now living in a Kenyan refugee camp – granted a Last Remaining Relative Visa.
The request has fallen on deaf ears.
The couple has three other children, and the family was granted residency in Darwin on humanitarian grounds 10 years ago. The Red Cross discovered Saacid was still alive in 2007.
Mrs Ali said her husband, who can longer communicate, was a broken man.
“He screams Saacid, Saacid, Saacid sometimes at night,” an emotional Mrs Ali said from her Leanyer home.
“We have been patiently waiting nearly five years now. We have gone about this process legitimately and fairly and have done everything that has been asked of us. Now my husband is dying and he cannot go without seeing his boy. He only has three months to live.
“We are upstanding citizens, having lived in Darwin for 10 years, working, paying taxes, instilling good work ethics in all our children. And we are simply asking Minister Morrison to use his powers of discretion to reunite Abdi and Saacid before my husband dies.”
Specialists at Royal Darwin Hospital, along with NT Department of Health, have made representations via letter to the Australian High Commission in Kenya, attesting that the gravely ill 69-year-old man has limited time to live.
Nearly 15,000 signatures have also been taken on a petition circulating on behalf of the family’s plight.
Late yesterday a spokeswoman for Federal Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said there were no provisions to prioritise one application over the other as all queued applications were processed in date lodgement order.
A devastated Mrs Ali said there was not much more the family could do.
“We have been ‘queuing’ patiently, but this is about a dying man and the son he has not seen for 23 years,” she said.
“Abdi wants to see the man Saacid has grown into and get to know him a little in his last remaining days.”
Before coming to Australia, Abdi and Fatuma spent 15 years in a refugee camp in Kenya, during which time Fatuma worked for UN agencies and other organisations promoting rights of women, community development and anti-violence programs.
Her advocacy work meant the family were often threatened and the UN eventually resettled them in Australia.