Rathy Barthlote, a mother’s story Christmas Island 2013

“To an Island with My Three-Year-Old” The Beginning of My Life as a Refugee

By Rathy Barthlote

It was the year 2013.

It was at the break of dawn that my life completely changed.

With my three year old child held tightly in my arms, I began a journey without citizenship, without land, without a place of my own to the remote prison-island called Christmas Island, part of Australia.

That journey was one of the most difficult and yet the most meaningful moments of my life.

A Mother’s Decision

There was fear and shame in my child’s eyes.

In her little mind, the world had somehow collapsed.

And as a mother, my only goal, my only obsession was to protect her.

As a Tamil woman who had lost her homeland,

The war and genocide in Sri Lanka had torn through me.

And just when I thought we had escaped from it 

We were imprisoned once again, in a new kind of cage.

Christmas Island: A Place Without the Echo of Freedom 

Christmas Island even the name felt like a cruel joke from a colonial tradition.

Christmas means joy, celebration, and family.

But for us, that island only meant confinement, isolation, and coercion.

Even the trees and shores of that island didn’t embrace us.

We were not criminals.

We were survivors from a war-torn country.

But they treated us as if we were guilty just for trying to live.

And deep inside, I had one burning fear for my child:

That her life would begin inside a prison.

Her Every Night, My Every Tear

My child had food there. A place to sleep.

But there was no peace of mind, no safety, no rights.

In her childhood memories only fences, guards, fear, and silence.

And me I was a mother.

If only I had shattered myself alone, I could have borne it.

But watching my daughter an innocent Tamil child

Be forced to carry the weight of this violent world

It felt like I had committed a crime against her.

And Yet, in That Island, the Seeds of Resistance Were Planted

It was in that very place that my resistance was born.

I realised: my silence would not protect my daughter.

I had to speak.

I had to raise my voice for her, and for the history of my people.

The women, children, and families I met there 

Even in their breath, there was resistance.

We cried together, we feared together and at times, we resisted together.

Those tiny seeds of resistance are what transformed me

Into an organiser within a movement.

From 2013 to Now: The Transformation of My Journey I came to Christmas Island with a three-year-old child.

Today, I speak, I write, not just for myself 

But for every Tamil refugee who was ever trapped on that island.

The pain of that journey doesn’t disappear.

But that pain has transformed into a struggle that opens new pathways.

I am a Tamil woman.

I am a mother.

I am a refugee.

But more than all of this 

I am a resistor.