{"id":31653,"date":"2019-02-03T19:22:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T19:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31653"},"modified":"2019-02-03T19:22:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T19:22:57","slug":"mbs-clampdown-fuels-surge-in-numbers-of-saudi-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31653","title":{"rendered":"MBS &#8216;clampdown&#8217; fuels surge in numbers of Saudi refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\"><cite class=\"el-editorial-source\"> (CNN)<\/cite>Dawn was breaking in Sydney when Nourah&#8217;s phone rang. &#8220;I need you to help me. I need you to speak to people on my behalf,&#8221; the 20-year-old Saudi asylum-seeker recalled the caller saying. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">The woman &#8212; a Saudi teen who identified herself as <a href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/2019\/01\/15\/americas\/saudi-teen-asylum-intl\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Rahaf al-Qunun<\/a> &#8212; explained to Nourah that her passport had been confiscated at a Bangkok airport, and Thai authorities were threatening to deport her. Qunun&#8217;s story captured international attention last month with her impassioned Twitter plea for asylum.<\/div>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">While Qunun barricaded herself in an airport hotel room to prevent her deportation, Nourah &#8212; who declined to reveal her full name for security reasons &#8212; was pacing up and down a public park in Sydney, making calls to Western news outlets. She had never met Qunun, but Nourah had recently also fled Saudi Arabia. She didn&#8217;t need to know who Qunun was, she said, to understand the urgency of her situation. Within days, Qunun was granted asylum in Canada.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(CNN)Dawn was breaking in Sydney when Nourah&#8217;s phone rang. &#8220;I need you to help me. I need you to speak to people on my behalf,&#8221; the 20-year-old Saudi asylum-seeker recalled the caller saying. The woman &#8212; a Saudi teen who identified herself as Rahaf al-Qunun &#8212; explained to Nourah that her passport had been confiscated&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}