A Saudi teen who said she was detained at a Bangkok airport while traveling to Australia to seek asylum after fleeing her abusive family will…
A Saudi teen who said she was detained at a Bangkok airport while traveling to Australia to seek asylum after fleeing her abusive family will not be forcibly deported, a Thai official said Monday.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, said she escaped her family while they were vacationing in Kuwait and fled to Bangkok, hoping to make it to Australia to seek asylum.
Thai authorities, who held Qunun at an airport hotel in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, initially planned to send her back to Kuwait – but the young woman barricaded herself in her room and demanded to meet the UN’s refugee agency.
On Monday, immigration chief Surachate Hakparn said that Thailand will not send her back immediately.
“If deporting her would result in her death, we definitely wouldn’t want to do that,” he said amid a global media outcry as Qunun pleaded on Twitter for various countries to help her.
