Brave Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun’s Twitter feed says it all. “Don’t let anyone break your wings, you’re free. Fight and get your rights!” Easier said than done, if you happen to be from Saudi Arabia, where females can’t travel, study, or sign legal documents without permission from a male “guardian”.
But Alqunun, 18, had been so desperate to get away from her father and brother, who she claims had physically abused her, she was determined to flee her homeland. Further, she’d given up her Islam faith, a crime potentially punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.
Her escape was planned months ahead. Supporting her from afar, were other expat young Saudi women who had also fled their oppressive homeland which, since June 2017, has been ruled by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. (Initially lauded by some for allowing Saudi women to drive, he later jailed the key activists who had led the campaign.)
On Jan. 5, while holidaying with her family in Kuwait, Alqunun managed to break away and head to the airport. Armed with an Australian visitor’s visa, she flew to Thailand, planning to get a flight to Sydney. But when she entered the airport arrivals lounge, Saudi officials were waiting.
Demanding her passport, they told her she’d be forced to return to Kuwait, where her “very angry” father was waiting. Officials weren’t counting on the terrified, quick- thinking teen’s ability to turn her Twitter account into a global cry for help. From her airport hotel, she tweeted to her 24 followers, “I’m the girl who ran away to Thailand. I’m now in real danger because the Saudi embassy is trying to force me to return.”
Soon thousands were tweeting support, demanding Alqunun, who feared she’d be killed returned to Saudi Arabia, was granted asylum. Among the first to swing into action was Australia’s Human Rights Watch office, which alerted its Thai counterparts and the UN’s Human Rights Council. After Thai journalists began tweeting about Alqunun, Thai officials became less supportive of Saudi pressure to get the fearful young woman on the plane back to Kuwait.
By Jan. 9, the UNHRC had declared Alqunun – who now had more than 100,000 Twitter followers – a refugee, and on Jan. 1 she was granted asylum in Canada. “It’s a great result,” said Human Rights Watch’s Australian director Elaine Pearson. “Had she been forced to go back, we shudder to think what would have happened to her. After she cut her hair, her family locked her up for six months in retaliation.”
Other women who had tried and failed to escape Saudi Arabia have faced a grim fate. In 2017, Dina Ali Lasloom fled her country, but was caught by male relatives at Manila airport in the Philippines and forced onto a plane to Saudi Arabia. She has since disappeared.
“We hear so many terrible reports, but it’s very hard to get statistics about brutality towards women in Saudi Arabia,” Pearson said. “Many female activists, like the women instrumental for pushing for the right to drive, are now behind bars. They were the ones with the most information about women being brutalised and they have been silenced.”
Pearson is heartened by the global response to Rahaf ’s plight. “Her case has served as an inspiration to repressed women across the Arab world.”
International relations expert Dr Kumuda Simpson-Gray, from La Trobe University in Melbourne, says the case, along with the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consul in Turkey, has highlighted the Bin Salman regime’s appalling human rights record.
“Australia and other countries that trade with Saudi Arabia have been shockingly quiet on condemning human rights abuses, in particular the way women are treated,” Simpson-Gray says. “It’s unfortunate it takes a case like this, involving one desperate young woman with an iPhone, to draw attention to what’s happening.”
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