4 Responses to “The flight leaves in 5 hours”

• #1

  Omar

  January 6, 2019 at 10:35 pm

  Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun’s case is getting good TV publicity here in Australia. Meanwhile, the Saudi Embassy in Canberra is shut tight and bolted up (as usual).

  I assume they are not giving interviews.
• #2

  Omar

  January 6, 2019 at 10:50 pm

  She said: “If they didn’t kill her they couldn’t go [around in] public after this [Qunun renouncing the Muslim faith], so they have to do it. It’s like, ‘If you’re a man you should prove it’. If they don’t kill her they can’t go outside and see other men.”

  Qunun’s 20-year-old friend has lived in Australia for three months, and said she was seeking asylum there after being abused in Saudi Arabia. She said she had known Qunun for one year, after connecting with her online. “She’s an activist, she’s a feminist,” she said. “There are lots of feminist groups [in Saudi Arabia].

  “They gather online to protect each other, help each other. [For example] I saw a woman giving money to shelters, food, donations. Even buying tickets for women escaping.”

  No doubt about that Islam. It’s one hell of a religion. Literally.

  NO…! I TAKE THAT BACK…!

  It’s more like entry-level fascism.

  NO…! I TAKE THAT BACK TOO…!

  More like the full-blown variety.

  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/06/saudi-woman-held-bangkok-fears-will-be-killed-repatriated
• #3

  What a Maroon

  January 7, 2019 at 7:43 am

  Good news, at least for now:

  Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, 18, will be taken to a safe location in Bangkok, a hotel where U.N. staff members will interview her and process her status determination in coming days. She originally was set to be deported back to Kuwait, where her family was waiting for her.

  On Monday night, after she had left the airport, Alqunun tweeted that she had heard that her father just arrived in Thailand, and that it “worried and scared her.”

  “I want to go to another country that I seek asylum,” she wrote. “But at least I feel [safe] now under UNHCR protection with the agreement of Thailand authorities. And I finally got my passport back.”
• #4

  Ophelia Benson

  January 7, 2019 at 8:05 am

  Oh, fantastic. Thank you for sharing it.