Tired but smiling, an 18-year-old Saudi runaway who said she feared death if deported back home has arrived in Canada, which had offered her asylum in a case that attracted global attention after she mounted a social media campaign.<\/p>\n
“This is Rahaf Alqunun, a very brave new Canadian,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said arm-in-arm with the Saudi teen in Toronto’s airport.<\/p>\n
Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun smiled broadly as she exited an airport arrival door sporting a Canada zipper hoodie and a UN High Commissioner for Refugees hat, capping a dramatic week that saw her flee her family while visiting Kuwait and then flying to Bangkok.<\/p>\n
From there, she barricaded herself in an airport hotel to avoid deportation and tweeted about her situation.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada would accept Ms Alqunun as a refugee.<\/p>\n
Several other countries, including Australia, had been in talks with the UN’s refugee agency to accept Ms Alqunun, Thai immigration Police Chief Surachate Hakparn said.<\/p>\n
“She chose Canada. It’s her personal decision,” he said.<\/p>\n
The UNHCR withdrew its referral for Ms Alqunon to be resettled in Australia because Canberra was taking too long to decide on her asylum.<\/p>\n
Ms Alqunun went to the Australian embassy in Bangkok on Wednesday and completed the visa application.<\/p>\n
But Australian officials confirmed to the ABC that her case was still being processed late on Friday.<\/p>\n
There was growing concern within the UNHCR over Ms Alqunun’s security as she remained in Bangkok.<\/p>\n
With these security fears in mind, she was taken to the Canadian embassy in Bangkok on Friday morning. Her visa was processed within several hours and she was booked on a flight to Canada in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
“When referring cases with specific vulnerabilities who need immediate resettlement, we attach great importance to the speed at which countries consider and process cases,” a UNHCR spokesperson in Bangkok told AP in an email reply on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Canada’s ambassador had seen her off at the airport, where Ms Alqunun thanked everyone for helping her. She plans to start learning more English.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tired but smiling, an 18-year-old Saudi runaway who said she feared death if deported back home has arrived in Canada, which had offered her asylum in a case that attracted global attention after she mounted a social media campaign. “This is Rahaf Alqunun, a very brave new Canadian,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said arm-in-arm with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,69,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","category-world"],"views":140,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2239,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions\/2239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}