A Saudi woman is being held at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand after trying to escape her family in Saudi Arabia.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, said she renounced her religion, Islam, and now fears for her life if repatriated as planned early on Jan. 7.
According to a series of live videos and messages that Rahaf posted to Twitter, she had planned to travel to Australia to apply for asylum.
She lives with her parents and six siblings in Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, where her father is a government official according to the Daily Mail.
Rahaf is being held in an airport hotel guarded by security officials. She told The Daily Mail, “When I came to Thailand someone told me that he will help me to get a visa for Thailand in the airport. After that he took my passport. After one hour he came back with five or six people, I think they were police or something and then they told me my father is so angry and I must go back to Saudi Arabia. They know I ran away from him.”
“I am scared. My brother told me that he’s waiting with some Saudi men. They will take me to Saudi Arabia and my father will kill me because he is so angry. He will kill me. My family do this, I know them. They kept telling me they will kill me if I do something wrong—they say that since I was a child.”
Rahaf had requested her passport back so she could fly to another country.
“They [the airport officials] kept telling me I can’t get a visa. The airline told me I have to stay here, so I can go back to Kuwait. From Kuwait they [my family] will take me to Saudi Arabia.
“They [my family] will kill me. I am so scared. I don’t know what I will do. I have to fight, because I don’t want to lose my life,” she told The Daily Mail.
She also told BBC Newshour she has renounced Islam. Renouncing Islam in Saudi Arabia is considered a crime that is punishable by death.
Human Rights Watch Asia deputy director Phil Robertson warns Rahaf is at serious risk of “honor violence.”
“As far as we can tell, her father is a prominent government official, I expect he’s going to be very, very harsh,” Robertson told The Daily Mail. “Certainly he’s senior enough to do whatever he wants to his daughter and nobody is going to raise a finger against him. There’s a long history of what they call ‘honour violence.’ I think she’s at serious risk. We’ve been pressing the UN to get in there. They need to go to the airport.”
According to AFP, Thailand’s immigration chief Surachate Hakparn said Rahad had fled her family to avoid marriage and is “concerned she may be in trouble [after] returning to Saudi Arabia.”
“She had no further documents such as return ticket or money,” Hakparn said, adding Thai authorities had already contacted the “Saudi Arabia embassy to coordinate.”
Meanwhile, Thai Police Major General Surachate Hakparn told the BBC Rahaf was denied entry and is being deported via the same airlines she had taken to arrive into the country, Kuwait Airlines, because she did not have a visa to enter Thailand.
Rahaf said she had a visa to go to Australia and was planning to travel via Thailand to Australia. It is unclear why Rahaf would need a Thai visa or why she would need to be deported on such grounds.
On Twitter, the hashtag #SaveRahaf is being used to publicize and follow her case.
A spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR, told MailOnline “For reasons of confidentiality and protection, we are not in a position to comment on the details (or even confirm or deny the existence) of individual cases.”
“However, UNHCR consistently advocates that refugees and asylum seekers, having been confirmed or claimed to be in need of international protection, cannot be returned to their countries of origin according to the principle of non-refoulement, which prevents states from expelling or returning persons to a territory where their life or freedom would be threatened. This principle is recognized as customary international law, and is also enshrined in Thailand’s other treaty obligations.”
