Rahaf al-Qunun: 'I hope my story encourages
other women to be brave and free'
Saudi woman
begins new life in Canada after her family disowns her
Hannah
Ellis-Petersen
Tue 15 Jan
2019 04.57 GMT
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, the Saudi woman who
captured the world’s attention by barricading herself in a Thai hotel room
after fleeing abuse in her own country, has said she hopes to inspire other Saudi women to
be “brave and free”.
Flee: If you flee from something or
someone, or flee a person or thing, you escape from them.
Speaking in her first interview after being
given asylum in Canada, and landing in Toronto on Saturday, Qunun, told the ABC
Australia her case might
be the “agent for change” in Saudi Arabia, a country where women are denied
basic freedoms and are not allowed to work, marry and travel without the
permission of a male guardian.
“I think that the number of women fleeing from
the Saudi administration and abuse will increase, especially since there is no
system to stop them,” said Qunun. “I hope my story encourages other women to be
brave and free.”
The 18-year-old added: “I hope my story prompts a change to the laws,
especially as it’s been exposed to the world.”
Prompt: To prompt someone to do
something means to make them decide to do it.
Qunun, who was in her first year of university,
described how her desire to be independent and to escape abuse inflicted by her
father and brother had driven her to make the
drastic decision to flee her family during a visit to Kuwait, and head for
Australia, with a stopover in Bangkok.
She had a visa
for Australia but at Bangkok airport she was detained by the Thai immigration
authorities, who then placed her in a hotel room ready to be deported back to
Saudi Arabia.
Stopover: A stopover is a short stay in a
place in between parts of a journey.
After barricading herself in the room and
refusing to leave for six nights, Qunun said she had expected
the authorities to “enter the room and kidnap me” and had contemplated taking her own life.
“That’s why I wrote a goodbye letter. I decided
that I would end my life, before I was
forced back to Saudi Arabia,” she said. However, as she used Twitter to
publicise her plight, abuse and her decision to
renounce Islam, her campaign for asylum quickly gathered momentum
and support around the world.
Plight: If you refer to someone's
plight, you mean that they are in a difficult or distressing situation that is
full of problems.
Momentum: If a process or movement gains
momentum, it keeps developing or happening more quickly and keeps becoming less
likely to stop.(ímpetu)
“I wanted to be
free from oppression and depression,” she told the ABC. “I wanted to be
independent. I wouldn’t
have been able to marry the person I wanted. I couldn’t
get a job without permission.”
Qunun had originally applied
for asylum in Australia but confirmed it was the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees that chose Canada because it processed her
application more quickly. “This wasn’t my choice, it was the UN’s,” she said.
“All I wanted was for a country to protect me. So, my choice was just for any country
to protect me.”
Qunun’s father, who is a governor in Saudi
Arabia, and brother had
travelled to Bangkok
following her escape in an attempt to bring her back with them. After news of
her successful asylum in Canada, the family released a statement
on Monday saying they had
disowned Qunun and
described her as “mentally unstable”.
Statement: A statement is something that
you say or write which gives information in a formal or definite way.
Disown: If you disown someone or something, you say or show that you no longer
want to have any connection with them or any responsibility for them.
In Saudi Arabia, the government-backed National
Society for Human Rights (NSHR) also released a statement on Monday accusing
several foreign countries of inciting “Saudi female delinquents to rebel
against the values of their families and push them out of the country and seek
to receive them under the pretext of granting them asylum.”
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