Australia: No timeframe to decide on Saudi teen asylum seeker
BANGKOK: Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne yesterday said there was no timeframe for the assessment of the case of Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, a Saudi woman who fled to Thailand for fear her family would kill her.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has referred Qunun to
Australia for consideration for refugee resettlement.
“Following the UNHCR referrals, Australia is now going through the steps we are required to do in relation to the assessment process, and then, when that is complete, an announcement will be made,” Payne said after arriving here on a visit arranged before Qunun sought asylum.
Qunun is staying at a hotel here under the care of UNHCR.
She arrived in Thailand on Saturday and was initially denied entry. She had intended to fly from there to Australia to seek asylum.
She soon started posting messages on Twitter from the transit area of Suvarnabhumi airport, saying she had “escaped Kuwait” and her life would be in danger if forced to return to Saudi Arabia.
Within hours, a campaign sprang up, spread by a loose network of online activists, and the world watched as she refused to board a flight to Saudi Arabia and barricade herself inside a transit lounge hotel room.
On Monday, Thai authorities allowed her to enter the country.
Payne’s visit has thrown a spotlight on another refugee case, involving Bahrain footballer Hakeem AlAraibi, who has refugee status in Australia, but was arrested at an airport here last year after arriving for his honeymoon.
Bahrain made a request to have him extradited, and he is in jail, waiting for a hearing.
Lawyers and legal experts said Australian authorities were weighing Qunun’s asylum claim at unusual speed, contrasting her highprofile plight with a normally excruciatingly slow system.
Canberra had said it would treat the case “in the usual way, as it does with all” refugee cases referred by UN.