General

Saudi runaway sisters plead for UNHCR protection on social media

NEWS AGENCIES 17 Apr 2019
Maha al-Subaie, 28, and Wafa al-Subaie, 25 say they are trapped and in danger after fleeing Saudi Arabia.

Two Saudi sisters are pleading for asylum saying they are trapped in the former Soviet republic of Georgia after fleeing their country, in the latest case of runaways from the ultra-conservative kingdom posting appeals on social media.
Using a newly created Twitter account called “GeorgiaSisters”, they identified themselves as Maha al-Subaie, 28, and Wafa al-Subaie, 25.
In a video posted on Twitter, Maha says: “We want your protection. We want a country that welcomes us and protects our rights.”
The sisters claim “they fled oppression from our family because the laws in Saudi Arabia is too week [sic] to protect us” and say they are in danger.
They say their father and brothers have arrived in Georgia looking for them.
They have posted photos of themselves on Twitter so that “if something happened to us people would remember us”.
They asked for protection from the United Nations refugee agency the UNHCR. They say the Saudi government has suspended their passports, trapping them in Georgia.
Last month, two Saudi sisters fleeing their family in Saudi Arabia secured emergency visas after hiding for months in Hong Kong, according to their lawyer.
The young women, who go by the aliases Reem and Rawan, left Hong Kong for a new country of residence, which has not been named.
Lawyer Michael Vidler said in a statement that the sisters, aged 18 and 20, were granted emergency humanitarian visas after six months in Hong Kong. Vidler said the two are now “beginning their lives as free young women”.
The sisters say they were escaping alleged abuse by their male relatives, according to Amnesty International. They claim they escaped while on a family trip in Sri Lanka, intending to seek asylum in Australia but were intercepted at Hong Kong airport by Saudi officials and subsequently went into hiding.
In January, an 18-year-old Saudi woman, Rahaf al-Qunun, was granted asylum in Canada after using Twitter to garner worldwide attention from a hotel room in Bangkok.