Thailand said it won’t deport an 18-year-old Saudi woman who claims to be fleeing abuse from her family and is staying inside Bangkok’s main airport.
Rahaf Mohammed Al-Qunun, whose situation has gone viral via her Twitter feed, told Human Rights Watch that she arrived at the airport on Jan. 5 from Kuwait, and that her passport was seized, preventing her from travelling to Australia. Thai officials earlier told her she would be forced to return on Monday to Kuwait to her father and brother.
‘She’s in Thailand now,’ Surachate Hakparn, the nation’s immigration chief, said in a briefing Monday afternoon at the Suvarnabhumi Airport. ‘Nobody can force her to do anything. We’ll protect her.’
Surachate said he and representatives from the United Nations refugee agency, known as UNHCR, would meet Al-Qunun to discuss whether she wants to go to Australia or stay in Thailand.
On Monday evening, Thai authorities granted the agency access to Al-Qunun ‘to assess her need for international refugee protection,’ UNHCR said in a statement. ‘For reasons of confidentiality and protection, we will not in a position to comment on the details of the meeting or the outcome.’
Al-Qunun has been holed up in a hotel at the airport and earlier said in a video posted on her Twitter feed that she wouldn’t leave the room until she met UNHCR representatives, adding she wanted asylum.
‘I’m shouting out for help of humanity,’ she wrote on Twitter, where she’s been documenting her situation in Arabic and English.
{{/usCountry}}‘I’m shouting out for help of humanity,’ she wrote on Twitter, where she’s been documenting her situation in Arabic and English.
{{/usCountry}}She said that she’s ‘in real danger’ if Thai authorities deport her. Al-Qunun barricaded herself inside the hotel room to resist deportation aboard a Kuwait Airways flight on Monday morning, which then left Bangkok without her, according to her posts.
The Saudi embassy in Bangkok said in a Twitter statement it had not impounded Al-Qunun’s passport, adding it doesn’t have the authority to stop her at the airport or anywhere else. It said she was stopped by airport authorities for lacking ‘a return reservation or a tourist program’ and will be deported to Kuwait where her family lives. Al-Qunun said however that she resides in Saudi Arabia, posting a picture of her university identification card.
Criminal Charges
Human Rights Watch said she’s at risk of facing criminal charges in Saudi Arabia for ‘parental disobedience,’ which can result in imprisonment, as well as for ‘harming the reputation of the kingdom.’
‘Thai authorities should immediately halt any deportation, and either allow her to continue her travel to Australia or permit her to remain in Thailand to seek protection as a refugee,’ said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Bloomberg wasn’t able to speak to Al-Qunun or independently verify her story, though she posted a copy of her passport on Twitter.
While Saudi Arabia has gradually granted women more rights as part of an economic overhaul led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the conservative Islamic kingdom still applies a guardianship system that makes women legal dependents of male relatives. Women of all ages need permission from their guardian -- typically a father, husband or brother -- to marry or travel abroad.
In 2017, another Saudi woman, Dina Ali Lasloom, was forcibly returned to Saudi Arabia while in transit in the Philippines during an attempt to get to Australia. She was held in a detention facility for women under 30 upon her return, and it is unclear what happened to her after that.
Thailand’s military government was criticized last year for arresting Hakeem Al-Araibi, a former Bahrain soccer player with refugee status in Australia. He had come to Thailand for his honeymoon and remains in detention pending possible extradition to Bahrain.
Saudi Arabia’s relations with Thailand have been strained for decades after gems including a valuable blue diamond were stolen from a Saudi prince by a Thai employee and a Saudi businessman who traveled to investigate the theft went missing.