Today, Saudi Arabia has some of the most restricting laws on women. Each one is assigned a guardian, which is essentially any male in the family, whose job will be to give them permission to do certain things like drive, travel, and even file a report to the police. The women there are locked into being a minor for their entire lives. But some don’t want to live that life anymore; they simply want to break free and be in control of their own actions. One such person was Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun. Mohammed, as she dropped her family’s last name, was able to escape to Thailand when she traveled with her family out of Saudi Arabia. She had been planning on making her way to Australia, where she would seek official refugee status, but was stopped by Thailand officials who were seeking to send her back to her family. They tool Mohammed’s passport, placed in a nearby hotel room, and had her wait till they could book a plane back to Saudi Arabia. But things didn’t go exactly as planned.
While trapped in the room, Mohammed made the decision to bring her situation to social media and to request official refugee status from there. Using Twitter, she wrote, “based on the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, I’m rahaf mohmed, formally seeking refugee status to any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family.” The backlash from the media forced officials to take notice of her dilemma and ultimately worked in her favor. On the 11th of January, Canada officially accepted her plea and she soon took up residence in the state, excited at being able to live her own life and to leave her abusive family behind her.
But not all refugees are so lucky. Many typically end up being transported back to Saudi Arabia. But in those cases, they did not have thousands of people supporting them from the other side of a screen. The women who get shipped back are completely at the mercy of their guardians, and that in itself is quite dangerous. Common punishments for insubordination are beatings and the withholding of food. But in cases more severe, as in fleeing the country and renouncing their religion, punishments can go as far as being put to death. Mohammed is truly lucky that she was not forced back as many before her have been.
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