A young Saudi woman who was seeking asylum in Australia was stopped on a layover in the Philippines and returned to the kingdom against her will, activists fearing for her safety have said.
In self-recorded videos that have circulated widely on social media, Dina Ali Lasloom, 24, said authorities had held her at the Manila airport for 13 hours and confiscated her passport.
‘My name is Dina Ali and I’m a Saudi woman who fled Saudi Arabia to Australia to seek asylum,’ she said, adding she feared violence from relatives who came to bring her back home.
‘Please help me. I’m recording this video to help me and know that I’m real and I’m here.’
In one of them, Ms Ali said: ‘If my family come, they will kill me.’
The woman did not say why she sought refuge abroad, but Human Rights Watch cited a Canadian witness as saying she had intended to flee to Australia to escape a forced marriage.
Arranged marriages are the norm in Saudi Arabia, where a ‘guardianship’ system requires a male family member, usually the father, husband or brother, to grant permission for a woman’s study, travel, marriage and even medical treatment.
The witness said Lasloom approached her while in transit at the airport in Manila, saying ‘airport officials had confiscated her passport and boarding pass’ for a Sydney-bound flight.
The Canadian, who spent several hours with Lasloom at the airport in Manila, reported the asylum seeker cried when two of her uncles arrived.
She helped Lasloom film social media videos about her plight.
Identified as Meagan Khan by the Australian, she told the newspaper after landing in Bali that she had allowed Lasloom to use her phone to post the videos on Twitter.
‘Lasloom’s whereabouts are currently unknown,’ HRW said in a statement from Manila.
The New York-based watchdog also quoted an airline security official as saying he heard Lasloom ‘screaming and begging for help’ on Tuesday before security personnel and men who appeared to be Middle Eastern carried her ‘with duct tape on her mouth, feet and hands’ at the airport.
Asked about the HRW statement by AFP on Friday, the Philippine immigration department said it had held no one of Lasloom’s name and no Saudi national.
‘There was no Saudi national by that name who presented herself,’ spokeswoman Antonette Mangrobang said.
‘As far as immigration is concerned, we did not hold any Saudi national.’
The spokeswoman said that if Lasloom was a transiting passenger, then she would not have passed through immigration and it would have been up to the airline to decide what happened to her.
A Saudi activist told AFP that Lasloom, who lived in Kuwait, ‘was brought back by force to Riyadh and is now in custody.’
Lasloom had been forced onto a Saudi Arabia Airlines flight to Riyadh on Tuesday night.
But she did not emerge at King Khalid International Airport after the flight landed early Wednesday morning, but multiple passengers told Reuters they had seen a woman being carried onto the plane screaming.
‘I heard a lady screaming from upstairs. Then I saw two or three men carrying her. They weren’t Filipino. They looked Arab,’ said one Filipino woman, who declined to give her name.
A rare gathering of about 10 Saudi activists appeared in the arrivals area of the Riyadh airport around midnight on Wednesday, after a hashtag began circulating on Twitter urging people to ‘receive Dina at the airport.’
One of them, a 23-year-old female medical student, Alaa Alanzi, was arrested when she tried to inquire about her whereabouts, the Saudi activist said.
Her sister, Nada, said airport officials told her Alanazi had been sent to a police station in central Riyadh, but said she was unable to confirm her sister’s whereabouts.
The activist worried that both women could be detained ‘for a long time.’
Saudi authorities brook little public dissent and frequently detain activists on charges of undermining social cohesion and participating in demonstrations.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was on a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday and Tuesday when the incident occurred.
The Berlin-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights told AFP that ‘the seriousness of what Dina Ali is facing’ stems from the guardianship system.
‘Women’s rights are… the most prominent human rights problem in Saudi Arabia,’ the group said.
The Saudi embassy in the Philippines said on Twitter that ‘the information that has been circulating over social media is untrue.’
It described the incident as a ‘family matter’ and said: ‘The citizen has now returned with her family to the homeland.’
Human Rights Watch called on Saudi Arabia to reveal whether Lasloom is with her family or is being held by the state at a shelter.
‘Lasloom is at serious risk of harm if returned to her family. She also faces possible criminal charges’ for alleged parental disobedience and harming the reputation of the state with her public cries for help, the watchdog said.
It called on the Philippine government to also investigate and hold accountable ‘any of their officials who failed to protect Dina Ali Lasloom’, as required by international law.
Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre, wrote on Twitter that Lasloom’s case is ‘a classic… in which state and family cooperate against women in KSA.’
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