Front Burner - The inside story of Rahaf Mohammed's escape from Saudi Arabia

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

Canada has granted asylum to Rahaf Mohammed, a Saudi teenager who fled to Thailand to escape alleged abuse from her family. CBC's senior correspondent Susan Ormiston shares the inside story of Mohammed's plight and her plans for the future.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Just a few weeks ago, a Saudi teenager named Rahaf Mohammed checked into a hotel in Thailand.

And she started posting videos of herself. She was afraid of what her family might do if she went home. I want asylum with UN. Within a few hours, Rahaf Mohammed was everywhere. Rahaf Mohammed. Rahaf Mohammed was everywhere. Rahaf's request for asylum was granted, and now she's living here in Canada. My colleague Susan Ormison sat down with her earlier this week, something very few people were able to do. And today on FrontBurner, she has the extraordinary story of how Rahaf got here and what happens next.

Susan, thank you so much for joining us today. You're welcome. Let's start with Rahaf Muhammad's life back in Saudi Arabia. Can you paint a picture for me? Yeah, so what she described to me was she grew up in a city called Haiy in northwestern Saudi Arabia. She lived with her family, but only part of her family. Her sisters, she has five, her brother and her mother. Her father didn't live with them.

He lived in another home because he has another wife and he has another family. So she described that she finished high school since she was 16. She was rebelling against the customs. She was against her religion. She described at one point where she wanted to cut her hair and she said that she was locked in a room for six months by her brother because it was against Islamic custom. In the beginning, they locked me up for six months because I cut my hair. And this was something forbidden because this is something like looking like a man. And it's forbidden in Islam for a woman to look like a man.

something like looking like a man, and it's forbidden in Islam for a woman to look like a man. Clearly, she was defiant against the restrictions that a woman of her age, a woman of any age in Saudi Arabia is accustomed to. For us, Saudi females were treated like slaves. We could not make our own decisions for marriage, for studying or for employment. We mostly take instructions from our parents, what we should do, what we should not do, and the things that we deviate from, we get punished. She talked to you about the abuse that she faced in her home. What did she say about that? She said she was beaten. I asked her directly. She said it was at the hands of her mother and her brother. She said her mother frequently beat her in some fashion because she wasn't praying.

She was definitely not living an Islamic life at that time. So there was corporal punishment in the home. She said not at the hands of her father because he was living away. He's a governor, a local governor in the area. Oh, so he would have very close ties to the Saudi government. Yes, and a reputation to protect. My understanding is that she was on vacation in Kuwait when she escaped her family, and then she ended up in Thailand.

Can you tell me about how that happened? Yeah, fascinating, really, in the detail. She told me that she was trying to convince her family to go on a vacation in Kuwait with the idea that she was going to break free, because it was much easier to do in Kuwait. She wouldn't be so restricted. And that she waited for the moment. She basically waited for them to sleep at night and got up the courage to escape. And all in one day, she bought tickets using a friend's credit card, she told other people, and then waited till they were asleep on the last day of their vacation. And then at 7am, she slipped out of where they were staying and took a flight

to Bangkok. And she was supposed to be going to Australia, no? That was her intent. I think other Saudi women have done that routing, leaving Saudi Arabia, leaving different circumstances, and trying to gain asylum in Australia. But of course, there is a stopover and hers was Bangkok. in Australia, but of course there is a stopover and hers was Bangkok. And what happened when she got to Bangkok? She said she emerged from the airport into the waiting area and there was a man holding a sign. We've seen it all in international airports. Someone welcomed me who had a sign with my name on it.

He said he would help me get a visa. After that, he took my passport and he brought the police. So tell me more about this man and how he would have known that she was in Bangkok and who was he and what happened to her. I can't confirm exactly how he was alerted, but she did say later that her family had alerted authorities that she had left Kuwait and somehow tracked her to Bangkok. So they were waiting for her. And essentially, their intention, in her view, was to detain her and hold her until her family could come to Thailand, which her brother and father did, and then send her back to Saudi Arabia. And that's when she got very afraid. And she was in a hotel near the airport, and she started to panic.

So she's in the hotel in Bangkok. What happens then? She's alone. She's recognizing that this flight from Saudi Arabia, in the bigger sense, has been aborted. She's been caught. And she told me that her lowest moment was when she realized she might be sent back to Saudi Arabia.

And she said, I was afraid that I would disappear and no one would know what would ever happen to me. At her lowest point, she wrote a letter. What did the letter say? It was to her friends, and it basically said, if you read this, I have disappeared, so please publish it and tell the world what happened. So during this time time I was thinking about what kind of goodbye message I would write, because I would not permit them to take me.

I was prepared to end my life before they kidnap me. Did you start that letter? Yeah, I wrote it and I sent it to my female friends. Should I disappear, they would publish it to the whole world. So is the idea here that when she got off the plane in Bangkok, she went with this man, and as a result, she was put in this hotel room and wasn't able to make her connecting flight to Australia? Yes, of course. She had no passport at that point. They seized her passport. Because she gave the man the passport. she was put in this hotel room and wasn't able to make her connecting flight to Australia.

Yes, of course. She had no passport at that point. They seized her passport. Because she gave the man the passport. Right. When she's in this hotel room, tell me about what she starts to do. She made a very difficult decision, she told me, knowing that on the one hand, being public might help her, but she couldn't be certain of that. And being public would identify where she was and that she was a very, very big target for people who wanted to get her. So she had to make that calculation. And in the end, I think she decided that she had nothing to lose. She needed people to know that she was in this situation.

She was desperate. What were these videos that she eventually decided to post? They were essentially saying, this is who I am. This is the situation I am in. And at one point, she posted a very direct video in English and said, I am not leaving this room until I get help from the UNHCR. And she said it like that because English is not her first language, and she was struggling. I'm not leaving my room until I see you, N-H-C-R. As she drew attention to herself through social media, she was getting supporters now trying desperately to get attention

and get help for her to at least figure out her situation. And I remember seeing this video as well. She also showed that she had barricaded herself in this hotel room, essentially. She put the mattress up against the door, and any kind of furniture that she could find was up against this door. Who? What do you want? Yes, because people were coming to the door and announcing that they were certain people to help her. And in fact, she believed that they were agents for people who wanted to get her out and back

to Saudi Arabia. The UNHCR, they eventually intervened here. How did they manage to get her out? Well, this is a process that is not entirely unique. The UNHCR has the power to act very quickly in emergency situations where they believe someone is A, a refugee, can be classified a refugee, and B, is in grave danger. So they can get the system going much more quickly than normal. They arrived at her door in the hotel. She told me she had to verify that they were who they said they were.

Once she trusted them, she started crying. Let's talk about how she managed to get to Canada. I know she was originally, as we talked about, trying to go to Australia. Yes, there was some history or some connection to Australia, which I can't confirm, but that was her intent. She certainly prefers the hot weather. At this point, the UNHCR, having done their assessment that she is a refugee and deciding, yes, she is a genuine refugee, they then would put out the call to countries to find a country who would accept her, who would give her asylum. And that's the process that they go through in these circumstances.

My understanding, without speaking to the Australians directly, was they were considering it, but they said that they would accept her as a refugee claimant, not as a bona fide refugee. And Canada was also in the discussion. I can't confirm the details, but ultimately Canada decided they would accept her as a refugee. Canada is always ready to stand up for human rights, always there

to defend women's rights around the world. We are a country that continues to provide asylum to people who are fleeing. This did seem really quick, and I know that there have been some criticisms around this, that this usurps a process that's in place for many other people who may be waiting in line. Is this normal, I guess, is the question that I want to get at. Well, it's both normal and extraordinary from what I understand of the process. There are normal procedures which can take up to two to three years in the worst cases after you've been declared a refugee. But there are cases which take anywhere from a week to three weeks in emergency situations. It was the UNHCR, I understand, who declared this as emergency situation and then had to find a solution.

You were at the airport when Rahaf arrived in Toronto earlier this week. And what was that scene like? We didn't know who would be with her. And what was that scene like? We didn't know who would be with her. And in the end, it was Canada's foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland, who came out beaming, really, with her arm around Rahaf. Rahaf was in a skirt and a hoodie with Canada on it and a big ball cap with UNHCR emblazoned on the front. And she did not speak.

Christy Freeland dominated the scene there and said that this was a brave new Canadian and introduced her, but said that at her request she was exhausted. She didn't want to speak to media at that time. And Rahaf wanted Canadians to see that she's arrived at her new home, but she's had a very long and tiring journey. I'd love to talk to you about your interview with Rahaf. You had the chance to sit down with her earlier this week after she arrived here, and she's just gone through this really intense journey. Did you get a sense of how she's doing? She'd had a chance to get some rest. She was extraordinarily composed both for a woman of her age and a woman who'd just gone through what she came through.

I was very happy. I felt like I was born again. So she said I was very happy. I felt like I was born again. And especially from feeling all the love that was coming from everyone that was, you know, in Canada and waiting for my arrival. Her family has now released a statement. They have essentially disowned her. They've called her naughty, essentially said that she's embarrassed them. What did she say to you about that? She told me that she dropped her last name, Al-Qunun, as a result of being denounced by her family. It's customary. If you are denounced, you no longer can carry the family name.

But then she started to get quite emotional. I asked her whether she expected this public denunciation, and she said she didn't, which may have been naive on her part, I don't know. But it made her very sad, she said, and she did start to tear up there. She said it was very sad. She says she can't answer. I asked her if her sisters, she has five sisters, if any of her sisters might be at risk because of the actions she took. And she concluded that they might be and that she had tried to reach out to her younger sister, but she had been blocked. She brought up the word hate and very frankly said, I know there

are people who hate me. Of course, I feel safe because Canada is a safe country. But I can't say that my situation is very safe, especially that everyone knows me. And a lot of people hate me, whether they're from my family or people in Saudi Arabia. She has received, in the first few days of her coming to Canada, over 100 threats daily on social media. It's a very toxic world, as we all know. So it's difficult to validate how real these are. But there are people who hate her for what she did, for what she stands for, for how she painted Saudi Arabia. The letter from the parents was extraordinary in that not only did they denounce her and say she was just a rebellious teenager,

but then they went on to plead with the kingdom not to blame the family. went on to plead with the kingdom not to blame the family. And then there was this tweet that she posted on the airplane coming to Canada that had a glass of wine in it. Yeah, I mean, everything she did in that last 48 hours while she was coming to Canada and trying to figure out her release was scrutinized and picked apart by people on social media, including this picture she tweeted out when she was on route from Thailand to Canada. And she was sitting in her airplane seat and she put, I did it. And you could see a glass of wine at her seat. And there was a whole blow up on social media about why is she drinking wine? What's she doing? You know, is she sitting in first class enjoying herself? And I asked her about that first. was it wine, not Coke?

She said, yes, it was wine. And I said, did it bother you what people said? She said, no. No, because I was expressing my happiness and I'm not a child. I could do what I want. She's 18. Now, in some ways,

that was the theme running throughout her story. I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to. And of course, we're coming off several months running throughout her story. I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to. And of course, we're coming off several months of really gruesome revelations about the government in Saudi Arabia, the climax of which was the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was very outspoken towards this regime who was murdered and then dismembered. And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that this plot went all the way up to the crown prince of the kingdom. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Saudi Arabia's crown prince was behind the journalist's killing.

Do you think that there are very real security concerns for Rahaf? I do, and I want to answer that in just a moment. But I want to pick up on what you said, because timing is always so much an issue in cases. So look at where we are now. Canada and Saudi Arabia have had very controversial relations in the last six months, at least, escalating tensions. Khashoggi was murdered. The kingdom was under extreme pressure for that. And there was a woman about 18 months ago, very publicly in the end, she was escaping her own frustrations with living in Saudi Arabia. She went from Saudi to the Philippines.

My name is Dina Ali and I'm a Saudi woman who fled Saudi Arabia to Australia to seek asylum. I stopped in Philippines for translate. They took my passport and locked me for 13 hours just because I'm a Saudi woman. She was not successful. She was caught and she was last seen with duct tape across her mouth, her hands and feet bound and packed onto a plane back to Saudi Arabia and she hasn't been seen since. Many people believe she's in a women's prison. So Rahaf Mohammed lands at this moment in a hotel in Thailand, and people who watch for these things, the markers of disasters to come, are saying, wait a minute, this could happen to her. We have to do something. Is there a concern that other women might also try to do what Rahaf has done now and that they could be in danger too? Yes. The power of social media is that anybody can access her story and so many have.

I mean, she has hundreds of thousands of followers now on Twitter. And we know she has received many appeals from women asking for her help. I've received appeals as a result of the stories we've done. She says now she counsels women in Saudi Arabia, at the very least, not to try to escape as she did because it was so risky and because they could get caught with dire circumstances. was so risky and because they could get caught with dire circumstances. So she's trying to tamp down, I think, any people who want to follow in her footsteps, but inevitably they may try. We've talked about how Rahaf comes at this moment in time. And before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there was this very public spat between Canada and Saudi Arabia,

which stemmed from Chrystia Freeland criticizing the kingdom's human rights records, particularly their jailing of women's rights activists. And there was a very serious response from Saudi Arabia. They kicked out our ambassador. They canceled future trade agreements with us. They kicked out Saudi Arabian medical students and doctors. There was even, you'll remember, this Saudi-linked group that sent out an image of a plane flying into the CN Tower, which brought up images of 9-11. Has there been any blowback from this incident?

Some of the diplomats we've spoken to who have their ear to the ground in Saudi Arabia, including our former ambassador there, are surprised there hasn't been more of a public blowback. They're not sure why. The only thing we have heard distinctly is this week, the head of the Saudi government-funded National Society for Human Rights, backed by the government, accused certain countries of inciting, quote, Saudi female delinquents to rebel against their family values and seek asylum. And he called this political, not humanitarian. So he's essentially saying that some countries, obviously Canada, is using refugees, in this case a young woman, as a prop to advertise their political aims. I want to go back to this image of Chrystia Freeland at the airport.

It's fitting then that the Saudi government is accusing Canada of using this young woman for political gains. There have been some criticisms of Krishav Vreeland and the Trudeau government for the photo op, essentially, at the airport. This is Rahaf Al-Tanat, a very brave new Canadian. I can't help but go back just a few months ago when a number of Syrian white helmet rescuers arrived here. The government took steps to make sure it stayed quiet, in part to protect their safety. So why are they making such a big show of Rahaf now? I don't know. They've been asked those questions but haven't answered. But I think there's a difference here between the Syrian white helmets and Rahaf Mohammed.

One is that she was public. It was her decision to be public. The White Helmets did not want to ever be public. So that's a big distinction here. And if you listen to Chrystia Freeland, she said that it was Rahaf Muhammad deciding what she would do and when in the public space. Chrystia Freeland said at the airport, I listened to her standing right in front of her, it was her defense that we stand up for women's rights and human rights regardless of what people say against us. It's not something that we're going to do one day and not do the next. And I would like to also emphasize that this is part of a broader Canadian policy

of supporting women and girls in Canada and around the world. For sure, for those who criticize Canada's immigration policy and criticize the Trudeau government's declaration of a feminist foreign policy, this would be another example of where they are going beyond the pale. at the airport on Saturday. And I've been thinking a lot also of my very dear friend, Roya Shams, who is a young woman who came to Canada from Afghanistan when she was about the same age as Rahaf.

And I know how difficult it was for Roya, even though she's thriving now and she's at university, to learn a new language and to go to school and to acclimatize herself to Canada and to be here without her family. It's made me think about these extra security concerns around Rahaf. It makes me feel like her journey is all the more difficult. I think she recognizes that in spite of her desire

to live a normal young woman's life here in Canada, with the freedoms that she says she did not have in Saudi Arabia, that's not entirely possible, at least in the short term. She does have security with her. She's a government-sponsored refugee, which means they help in aspects of her resettlement, and in her case, it includes security for the time being. They still have to help her find a place to live, and they talked this week about having to perhaps place her with a family

so that she has security within a group. Her story is very complicated. You heard her family denounce her because she shamed them. And many would say inside Saudi Arabia she brought shame upon the country. She is a player in a huge global story, not probably one she wanted to be, but as she goes forward into university life, it's hard to imagine she can be an anonymous student, because she's now a champion for some women, and she's a target to many others. In the beginning, I will learn the language.

I will try things that I haven't tried. I will learn things that I didn't learn. I will explore life. I'll continue my education in university, have a job and live a normal life. What does it feel like to have freedoms today that you didn't have a month ago? It's a very good feeling and I discovered that it's something that is worth the risk I took.

Susan, thank you so much for being here today. You're welcome. In my conversation with Susan, we referenced the statement that Rahaf's family is released, disowning her. I want to read some of that translated statement to you. We, the Mohammed Al-Qunun family living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, declare to everyone that we disowned Rahaf Al-Qunun, the naughty daughter who abused with her shameful and uncustomary behavior and embarrassed our Islamic customs and values. To the reputation and dignity of the family,

we ask our nation not to blame the family for her actions. This disowning was approved by all the elders of the family. In the statement, the family also praised the, quote, wise leadership of the king and crown prince of Saudi Arabia. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging.

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