The family of a Sri Lankan woman who has been stuck in the Cook Islands for three years because Australia and New Zealand refuse to let her transit warns that her “mental state is not good”.
Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, fled Sri Lanka hoping to settle in Aotearoa but has been left stuck in limbo after “a disastrous decision” to leave the country for a short stay in the Cook Islands after making a work visa application while on an asylum seeker “open work visa”, the BBC reports.
Ranasingha’s plight was first reported by Cook Islands News in early October. The newspaper reported that she had arrived in the Cook Islands in November 2023 and had been unable to leave since then.
Immigration New Zealand said it would not comment on her case, citing privacy concerns. However, it noted concerns about her intentions.
Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, fled Sri Lanka hoping to settle in Aotearoa.
123RF
Both New Zealand and Australian immigration authorities have rejected her transit visa applications multiple times.
Ranasingha told the BBC that her only son is getting married this month, and “I really want to be there for his wedding.”
“My mother is so worried about what has happened to me that she is constantly in and out of hospital,” she was quoted as saying by the BBC.
She told the BBC that she was “scared something is going to happen to me”.
According to her brother, who spoke to BBC Sinhala, Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018 after coming under “immense financial pressure” and unable to “repay loans” after being forced to close her small T-shirt factory.
He added that her husband, who was a drug addict, had died about seven years ago.
“One of the times we spoke [with Ranasingha], she told me that if they were not willing to get her back home alive, they might at least repatriate her body,” he told the BBC.
Ranasingha has told the Cook Islands News that she was willing to be detained if it satisfied authorities that she had no intention other than to return to Sri Lanka.
She described living without seeing her family for three years as “torture”.
But she told the BBC that she was “luckier than others in her position” because the hotel at which she is staying at in Rarotonga was letting her stay free of charge in its staff accommodation and locals providing her with food and clothing.
She said that one of the hotel directors had even provided her a sewing machine to allow her to make a small income.
According to the BBC, Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it was “taking all necessary steps to facilitate her return to Sri Lanka from the Cook Islands”.
“Officials of the Sri Lankan High Commission in Wellington, New Zealand, as well as the relevant New Zealand authorities, are working closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this matter,” it said.
Immigration & Secretarial Services, the agency Ranasingha claims got her in this situation, did not respond to the BBC.
Last week, a Wellington-based charity told RNZ Pacific it had offered to escort Ranasingha back home.
-BBC/Cook Islands News/RNZ Pacific
