Don’t deport Saudi woman: HRW to Thailand
Human Rights Watch has urged Thai authorities to halt the planned deportation of an 18-year-old Saudi woman who says she is fleeing her family and fears she will be killed if she returns home, Reuters reports.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun says she fled Kuwait during a visit there with her family and was planning to fly to Australia from Thailand to seek asylum.
She told the BBC she had renounced Islam and was afraid she would be sent back to her family in Saudi Arabia and killed.
"My brothers and family and the Saudi embassy will be waiting for me in Kuwait," Qunun told Reuters by text and voice message from a Bangkok transit hotel late on Sunday.
"They will kill me," she said. "My life is in danger. My family threatens to kill me for the most trivial things."
Human Rights Watch Deputy Middle East Director Michael Page said:
"Saudi women fleeing their families can face severe violence from relatives, deprivation of liberty, and other serious harm if returned against their will."
Qunun claims she was detained after leaving the plane in Bangkok and told she would be sent back to Kuwait.
"When I landed at the airport, someone came and said he would process the (Thai) visa but he took my passport. He came back with what seemed to be airport security and said that my parents objected and said I must return to Saudi Arabia via Kuwait Airways," she said.
Though she was scheduled to depart on a flight back to Kuwait to her family on Monday morning, she barricaded herself inside a transit hotel room at the Bangkok airport.
"She has barricaded herself in the room & says she will not leave" until she is allowed to meet the UN refugee agency and claim asylum, Human Rights Watch's deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said on Twitter.
Thai immigration officials say she was denied entry because she did not have a paid return ticket or a return ticket.
Thai police Major General Surachate Hakparn also told the BBC that Ms Mohammed al-Qunun was escaping a marriage.
They deny acting at the request of the Saudi government.
