Tag Archives: Sydney

#SaveRahaf: Activists’ lightning campaign made Saudi teen’s flight a global cause

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, a Saudi woman who claims to be fleeing her country and family, is seen in Bangkok, Thailand January 7, 2019 in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. TWITTER/ @rahaf84427714/via REUTERS

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panu Wongcha-um

BANGKOK (Reuters) – On Sunday morning, a new Twitter account was created by an 18-year-old Saudi woman denied entry into Thailand as she fled from what she said was an abusive family.

The first message from Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, in Arabic, was at 3:20 a.m. Thai time (2020 GMT Saturday) and posted from the transit area of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. It said: “I am the girl who escaped Kuwait to Thailand. My life is in real danger if I am forced to return to Saudi Arabia.”

Within hours, a campaign sprung up on Twitter dubbed #SaveRahaf. Spread by a loose network of activists around the world, within 36 hours it prompted Thailand’s government to reverse a decision to force the young woman onto a plane that would return her to her family.

Qunun was allowed to enter Thailand and on Tuesday was beginning the process of seeking asylum in a third country through the U.N. refugee agency.

“Everybody was watching. When social media works, this is what happens,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, of the international outcry.

Qunun’s family could not be reached to respond to her allegations of abuse. Reuters could not directly contact Qunun, but spoke to several confidants who described how the dramatic campaign unfolded across the world.

After her initial Tweet, Qunun posted nearly non-stop for five hours, saying she had been abused and threatened by her family.

Halfway around the world, retweets by Saudi Twitter users were noticed by Egyptian-American activist Mona Eltahawy in Montreal who began translating and retweeting Qunun’s Arabic tweets at 4 a.m. Thailand time, even though she was initially unsure if the account was authentic.

“(I was) doing my best to get attention to her because I could not live with myself if she was real and I ignored it,” Eltahawy told Reuters in an e-mail.

BANGKOK, MONTREAL, SYDNEY

About two hours later – 6 a.m. Sunday morning in Thailand but mid-afternoon in Australia – a Sydney-based video journalist noticed and retweeted Eltahawy’s translated messages.

The journalist, Sophie McNeill of Australia Broadcast Corp., began tweeting back to Qunun, and later the two began privately corresponding by direct message.

At 11 a.m. on Sunday in Thailand – eight hours after Qunun began tweeting – Human Rights Watch’s Robertson, who is based in Bangkok, also began tweeting about the case.

He also contacted Qunun directly and she replied.

“She said very clearly that she has suffered both physical and psychological abuse. She said she has made a decision to renounce Islam. And I knew once she said that, she is in serious trouble,” Robertson told Reuters.

Renouncing Islam is a crime punishable by death under the Saudi system of sharia, or Islamic law, though the punishment has not been carried out in recent memory.

By early Sunday afternoon, Robertson had notified the U.N. refugee agency in Thailand and several foreign embassies about the unfolding case, and they began to contact Thai authorities.

BARRICADED DOOR

At around the same time, journalist McNeill decided to fly to Thailand and try to meet Qunun.

“I’d never spoken to her before,” she told Reuters. “For me, it was so important that this was documented, and I wanted to be there and witness it.”

While McNeill boarded a flight from Sydney to Bangkok, Qunun was holed up in an airport transit hotel and afraid she would be forced onto the next flight back to Kuwait. She continued tweeting and also corresponding with Robertson of Human Rights Watch.

At around 5 p.m. Sunday, she was taken out of her room by Thai officials but later allowed to return.

“She filmed these two people talking to her,” said Robertson. “They said to her very clearly that they will put her on the Kuwait Airways flight KU 412 leaving (Monday) at 11:15 a.m.”

By this time, global media outlets had picked up on the story and Thai immigration officials were confirming that Qunun was to be expelled on Monday morning.

At about 1 a.m. Monday morning, Qunun posted a video of herself pushing a table to barricade her hotel room door.

Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun is seen with Thai immigration authorities at a hotel inside Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand January 7, 2019. Thailand Immigration Police via REUTERS

Saudi teen Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun is seen with Thai immigration authorities at a hotel inside Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand January 7, 2019. Thailand Immigration Police via REUTERS

THREATENING LANGUAGE

McNeill arrived in Thailand early on Monday and managed to join Qunun in her hotel room.

“When it became clear that she wasn’t going to leave, I decided it was important to stay and have someone documenting what was going on,” McNeill said.

Qunun refused to open the door when various officials came to escort her to the Kuwait Airways flight.

“We were inside the room and there were numerous people coming to the door … There were several Arabic speakers who came and were using threatening language to try and force her back on the plane,” McNeill recalled.

The flight to Kuwait City left without Qunun.

At 3:30 p.m. on Monday, Thailand’s immigration chief Surachate Hakparn held a press conference at the airport for dozens of Thai and international media representatives gathered in the transit area.

After a day of insisting that Qunun must be sent back under Thai law, Surachate said she would not be immediately be expelled since she could be in danger and he would meet U.N. officials to discuss her case.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) country representative Giuseppe de Vincentiis arrived at the airport at about 5 p.m. on Monday to meet Thai officials and Qunun herself.

By about 7:30 p.m on Monday, Surachate told reporters Qunun would be allowed to enter Thailand and apply for asylum in a third country.

The UNHCR said on Tuesday that it would take time to process Qunun’s application, and its officials continued to interview her at an undisclosed location.

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday denied on its Twitter account that its embassy in Thailand had asked for Qunun to be extradited, although Surachate had said the previous day the embassy had been in contact with Thai immigration before her arrival from Kuwait.

The Saudi embassy in Bangkok declined to comment on Qunun’s case when contacted by Reuters on Monday and could not be reached on Tuesday.

But on Tuesday, the Thai immigration office released a video clip of its officials meeting Saudi diplomats to discuss the case.

“When she first arrived in Thailand, she opened a new site (account) and the followers reached about 45,000 within one day,” a Saudi official speaking in Arabic through a translator tells Thai officials in the video.

“I wish you had taken her phone, it would have been better than (taking) her passport,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Rare Tornado Brings Record Winds to Australia

A rare tornado ripped through Sydney on Wednesday morning, reportedly bringing the fastest winds ever recorded in that region of Australia and leaving a wake of destruction in its path.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the storm featured wind gusts of 132 mph, which smashed the record for the state of New South Wales. The previous high of 106 mph was set back in 1974.

The tornado occurred as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued severe thunderstorm warnings for the region surrounding Sydney, Australia’s largest and perhaps most famous city.

Westpac Life Saver, a search and rescue helicopter service in New South Wales, shared photos on social media that showed the damage in Kurnell, a Sydney suburb. The pictures showed numerous downed trees, widespread debris and several homes that were missing roof shingles.

Other photographs shared on social media showed large hailstones, some the size of golf balls.

The Bureau of Meteorology reported the thunderstorms dumped more than three inches of rain in one hour in Nowra, about four hours south of Sydney. The precipitation in Sydney was significant enough to trigger some flash flooding, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The BBC reported no one was significantly injured in the tornado, though some properties were so severely damaged that authorities deemed them unlivable. Australian media outlet 9News reported officials are warning of the threat of asbestos in debris, particularly from older homes.

Crews were working to restore power to about 20,000 customers, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Heroes Of Sydney Terror Attack Praised

In the wake of the Islamic terror attack on a Sydney café, local officials are confirming the acts of bravery committed by the two hostages killed during the assault.

The first victim was a 38-year-old mother of three who died protecting a pregnant co-worker.  Katrina Dawson was a lawyer who worked in the central business district opposite the café.  She had been drinking coffee with Julie Taylor, a fellow lawyer who is pregnant, and when terrorist Man Haron Monis began firing she used her body to shield her friend.

The other victim was Tori Johnson, the manager of the Lindt Café.  Johnson jumped forward when the terrorist began to fire at the hostages in an attempt to wrestle the gun away from the attacker.  He suffered fatal wounds during the fight with Monis.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted to the press that the attacker was not on the terrorism watch list.  He could not explain why the openly hostile jihadist was not on the list.

The London Daily Mail said that Monis was on bail related to charges that he had plotted to kill a woman at the time of his assault on the café.

Weather Threatens To Be Worst Australian Firefighters Have Seen

Authorities trying to stop the out of control bushfires threatening New South Wales Australia have doubled the amount of men on the front lines to 3,000.

But the biggest threat is coming outside the flames for the brave firefighters.

Forecasters are calling for excessively high heat, very low humidity and high winds that threaten to accelerate the growth of the fires. The head of the Rural Fire Service told the BBC that the conditions facing firefighters on Wednesday will be “as bad as it gets.”

“It’s going to be a horror day in terms of the weather,” Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said. “Could be a horror day in terms of the fire.”

A total of 59 fires are burning in the state of New South Wales and the number of fires deemed “uncontrolled” has risen from 13 to 19 in the last 24 hours.

Fire officials have stated on television and radio that any resident near the fires should leave not only for their safety but to stop them from hampering the efforts of firefighters to save towns.

Australian Firefighters Deliberately Merge Major Bushfires

In a drastic attempt to control the bushfires burning toward their nation’s largest city, Australian firefighters have deliberately caused two of the biggest fires to merge.

The back burning operations near the Blue Mountains in New South Wales state were done with the expectation that weather conditions will continue to deteriorate and hamper efforts to control the flames. Currently 60 bushfires are burning in the area with 13 completely uncontained.

New South Wales Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shame Fitzsimmons told the BBC the joining of two fires at State Mine and Mount Victoria were done to keep the fires from joining with a third fire.

“We are seeing positive results of these very deliberate, very targeted, very decisive strategies being deployed particularly in relation to back-burning operations,” Fitzsimmons said. Over 1,500 firefighters are now on the scene fighting the blazes.

Parts of Sydney, the nation’s largest city, have been covered in a smoky haze for much of the week and air quality has been at dangerous levels. One man has died as a result of the flames and thousands have either fled their homes or are preparing for an evacuation if the flames continue to move toward the city.

Police say they have been able to determine that two of the bushfires were started by an 11-year-old boy.

Australian Wildfires Could Reach Sydney

Uncontrolled wildfires continue to rage across Australia and officials say there is a chance the flames could threaten the country’s largest city.

The government of New South Wales, the largest state in Australia, declared a state of emergency as forecasters are calling for high winds and temperatures to continue. The early start for the Australian bushfire season has already killed one person and have caused thousands to flee their homes and property.

While cooler weather had allowed firefighters to get the total amount of blazes down to 60 by Thursday, rural fire service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said the conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Other officials told the BBC that these fires are the biggest threat they’ve seen in over 40 years.

The Blue Mountains and Hawksbury communities west and north of Sydney are facing “unparalleled risk” according to local officials and embers from the flames have jumped the Nepean River from the foot of the mountains near Sydney’s suburban outskirts.

Police are preparing for mandatory evacuations.

“At the end of the day we hope to have buildings standing,” state police commissioner Alan Clarke told the London Daily Telegraph, “but if we don’t have buildings standing we don’t want bodies in them.”