Sri Lankan woman stranded in Cook Islands, Digi Mart USA News (Cook Islands): The family of a Sri Lankan woman who has been stuck in the Cook Islands for three years warns that her “mental state is not good.” Australia and New Zealand have refused to let her transit through their countries.
Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, fled Sri Lanka hoping to settle in Aotearoa, the Māori name for New Zealand. She has been left in limbo after what the BBC describes as “a disastrous decision” to leave her country for a short stay in the Cook Islands, made after she applied for a work visa while holding an asylum seeker “open work visa.”
Ranasingha’s plight was first reported by Cook Islands News in early October. The newspaper reported that she arrived in the Cook Islands in November 2023 and has 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.
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. “I really want to be there for his wedding,” she said.
“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 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 being unable to “repay loans” following the forced closure of her small T-shirt factory. He added that her husband, who was a drug addict, 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 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.”
She told the BBC she was “luckier than others in her position” because the hotel where she is staying in Rarotonga is letting her stay free of charge in its staff accommodation, and locals are providing her with food and clothing. One of the hotel directors even provided her a sewing machine so she can 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.” The ministry said, “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.”
Immigration & Secretarial Services, the agency Ranasingha claims led her into 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.
