Warning Her Life Is in Danger for Renouncing Islam, Saudi Pleads for Australia Asylum By Bridget Johnson
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/warning-her-life-is-in-danger-for-renouncing-islam-australia-weighs-saudis-asylum-plea/
A young Saudi woman fleeing family abuse is awaiting a decision on whether Australia will grant her asylum request after a dramatic standoff — broadcast on social media — with Thai officials who impeded her escape.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday that Rahaf Mohammed Al-qunun, 18, was safe for the moment after having her passport seized in Bangkok en route from Kuwait to Australia.
Al-qunun barricaded herself in a Thai hotel room over the weekend to avoid deportation, tweeting to draw attention to her plight: “I am the girl who escaped Kuwait to Thailand. My life is in danger if I’m forced to return to Saudi Arabia.”
“I’m rahaf mohmed, formally seeking a refugee status to any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family,” she tweeted on Monday.
Al-Qunun said she was confined in her room for six months for cutting her hair, and has suffered beatings and death threats from her male relatives.
Australian reporter Sophie McNeill locked herself in the room as well to help protect Al-qunun.
A network of Saudi women’s rights activists jumped in to help get #SaveRahaf trending. One of those women, who lives in Canada with her husband, told CBC that she’s now “actually feeling some kind of guilt because her story went viral and I’ve heard about other other women that have been, like, their fathers their brothers, they just took their phone.”
“It is scary. You know, even when you are trying to support this campaign in Saudi Arabia, you always have to cover your tracks,” she said. “I have my family there in Saudi Arabia. They don’t know that I am doing this. I was talking to my father when I last visited my family in Saudi. My father just told me that … if I’m thinking to just leave Islam and not be a Muslim anymore, that he’s going to kill me by himself. And I just got so scared.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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