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THAILAND-SAUDI-POLITICS-SOCIAL
Asylum assessment of Saudi woman in Thailand to take days: UNHCR
BANGKOK, Jan 8, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The asylum claim of a young Saudi woman
who resisted deportation from Thailand in a gripping, live-tweeted ordeal
will take “several days” to assess, the UN’s refugee agency in Bangkok said
Tuesday.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun arrived at Bangkok’s main airport over the weekend
on a flight from Kuwait after running away from her family who she alleges
subjected her to physical and psychological abuse.
The 18-year-old said she had planned to seek asylum in Australia, fearing
she would be killed if sent back by Thai immigration officials who stopped
her at the airport on Sunday.
Saudi Arabia’s parlous rights record has been under heavy scrutiny since
the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.
Initially, Thai authorities said Qunun would be sent back to Saudi Arabia.
But as her plight pinballed across social media — including tweets about
how she had barricaded herself in a hotel room — they abruptly changed
course and allowed her to leave the airport late Monday in UNHCR’s care.
The agency said it was “very grateful” that officials did not send Qunun
back against her will.
“It could take several days to process the case and determine next steps,”
the UNHCR representative in Thailand, Giuseppe de Vicentiis, said in a
statement.
Thailand is not a signatory to a UN convention on refugees, and asylum
seekers are typically deported or wait years to be resettled in third
countries.
The UNHCR insists anyone with an asylum claim should not be sent back to
the country they fled under the principle of non-refoulement.
Saudi Arabia’s embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Tuesday.
But in an extensive explanation released on Twitter, the embassy denied
sending officials to Suvarnabhumi airport to meet Qunun as she arrived from
Kuwait, where her family live.
It also said her passport had not been impounded as alleged while
explaining it is in contact with her father, a senior regional government
official in the kingdom, “to inform him on her situation”.
Another official told a Saudi-owned TV channel that Qunun’s father had
contacted the mission for “help” in bringing her back.
Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia has some of the world’s toughest
restrictions on women, including a guardianship system that allows male
family members to make decisions on behalf of female relatives.
Qunun has said she believes she will be imprisoned or killed if sent back
and that her family is so strict it once locked her in a room for six months
for cutting her hair.
Under the hashtag #SaveRahaf, the young woman’s desperate pleas became a
social media sensation, where she was able to post live updates and videos
from the Bangkok airport in both Arabic and English, racking up more than
80,000 followers.
Late Monday, her Twitter account said that her father had arrived in
Bangkok. AFP was not able to independently verify the news.
BSS/AFP/GMR/1136 hrs