Rahaf Mohammed

Rahaf Mohammed (formerly Rahaf Mohammed Mutlaq al-Qunun Al-Shammari; ; born 11 March 2000) is a Saudi woman who fled from her family in 2019. She was detained by Thai authorities on 5 January while in transit through an airport in Bangkok, en route from Kuwait to Australia. She had intended to claim asylum in Australia and escape her family who she says abused her and threatened to kill her for, among other reasons, leaving Islam, an act that is a capital offence under Saudi law.

After she appealed for help on Twitter and gained significant attention, Thai authorities abandoned their plans to forcibly return her to Kuwait (from where she would be repatriated to Saudi Arabia), and she was taken under the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and granted refugee status. On 11 January 2019, she was granted asylum in Canada and arrived in Toronto the next day.

Since her settlement in Canada, she has written a memoir.

Early life

Rahaf was born on 11 March 2000. Her father is the town governor of al-Sulaimi in the Ha'il Region. She has nine siblings. She was raised in a Wahabist family.

She has claimed that her family had locked her up for months, subjecting her to physical and psychological abuse. Her father has denied abusing her. Rahaf also said that her cousin threatened to kill her because she no longer follows Islam.

Fleeing from Saudi Arabia Detention at Thailand airport hotel

While Rahaf was on vacation with her family in Kuwait, she left them and boarded a flight to Bangkok, Thailand. She intended to continue on another flight to seek asylum in Australia. had been issued to her that permitted entry into Australia. and therefore did not require a Thai visa.

She was detained by Thai authorities at the Miracle Transit Hotel within the airport.

Mohammed posted about the situation on Twitter, saying that she had renounced Islam and was concerned that she could be murdered by her family if deported to Saudi Arabia. In one tweet, she shared a picture of her passport. and more than half a million tweets using the "#SaveRahaf" hashtag were posted. Australian ABC journalist Sophie McNeill flew to Bangkok and snuck into Mohammed's room, barricading herself with Mohammed to protect her.

Lawyers in Thailand filed an injunction to prevent her forced deportation. The injunction was subsequently dismissed, François Zimeray, a lawyer chosen by the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights to defend Mohammed in Bangkok against deportation back to Saudi Arabia, judged that Mohammed's tweets had played an overwhelming role in preventing her deportation. Zimeray stated that the Thai authorities' attitude changed "completely" in "a few minutes" when they realized the strength of international support for Mohammed. Mohammed revealed in a later interview that she wrote a goodbye letter, having planned to commit suicide if she was deported to Saudi Arabia.

Initial discrepancies in Thai government's accounts of events In an initial assessment on 5 January 2019, Human Rights Watch Asia deputy director Phil Robertson said "the Thai government... (was then) manufacturing a story that she tried to apply for a visa and it was denied... in fact, she had an onward ticket to go to Australia, she didn't want to enter Thailand in the first place". Subsequently, she was placed under the care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Her passport, which had indeed included a valid Australian tourist visa, was returned to her, and formal arrangements for the establishment of her long-term asylum status began.

UN involvement The UNHCR issued a statement on 7 January, stating that:

Mohammed subsequently left the airport in the care of the agency, With growing concerns over her safety and an unclear timeline how long Australia would take to process her application, the UNHCR referred her case to Canada and her application was processed within several hours. as a "resettled refugee". The UNHCR said this had been arranged "on a fast-track 'emergency' basis".

Reaction Rahaf's family released a statement disowning her: "We are the family of [Rahaf] Mohammed al-Qunun in Saudi Arabia. We disavow the so-called 'Rahaf al-Qunun' the mentally unstable daughter who has displayed insulting and disgraceful behavior." Abdul-Ilah al-Shuaibi, Saudi Arabia's chargé d'affaires in Bangkok, was quoted as saying, in a meeting with the Thai immigration office: "When [Rahaf] first arrived in Thailand, she opened a new [Twitter account] and the followers reached about 45,000 within one day... I wish you had taken her phone, it would have been better than [taking] her passport." Stephen Kalin, writing for Reuters, described Mohammed's case as triggering a new phase in the Saudi anti male-guardianship campaign.

After she was resettled in Canada, the Canadian government was accused by Saudi media of "an attempt at stirring up civil strife by inciting the Kingdom’s teenage girls to abandon social mores" in Okaz.

Some voices in the Arabic language media criticized the amount of coverage given to the case for various reasons, including the view that it gave excessive public attention to a family dispute, that the coverage would generate an excessively negative image of the condition of women in Saudi Arabia, and that it could encourage others to manipulate asylum policies.

Publications In 2022, she released a memoir, titled Rebel: My Escape From Saudi Arabia to Freedom. The memoir was received positively by The Guardian.