image copyrightCourtesy Ruchira Ranasingha
When Ruchira Ranasingha left Sri Lanka almost a decade ago, she never imagined she would end up stranded on a small archipelago in the South Pacific.
The 50-year-old woman, who has been trapped in the Cook Islands for three years, told BBC News that she is desperate to return to Sri Lanka and even offered to return "handcuffed, bound and gagged."
Ranasingha had hoped to settle in New Zealand.
After applying for asylum there, he says he followed an immigration advisor's recommendation to temporarily leave the country to apply for a work visa. However, once in the Cook Islands, his application was rejected.
But by leaving New Zealand, he breached the terms of his asylum-related visa.
Now this country refuses to issue him a transit visa that would allow him to fly back to Sri Lanka. Australia also refuses.
The only other international destinations you can fly to from the Cook Islands – Tahiti and Hawaii – require you to provide biometric information in New Zealand before any visa can be processed.
Consequently, he has no viable chance of leaving.
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"My son, my only son, is getting married in November and I really want to be present at his wedding. My mother is so worried about what has happened to me that she is constantly in and out of the hospital," she says through tears.
"I'll do anything they ask of me; I just want to get home."
Bad advice and a worse decision
Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018 after being forced to close her small T-shirt factory due to loss of customers. Struggling to repay her loans, she moved to Hong Kong to work as a domestic caregiver, caring for the elderly and children.
Her brother told BBC Sinhala that she had come under enormous financial pressure. She added that her husband, who was a drug addict, died about seven years ago.
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In December 2022, Ranasingha traveled to New Zealand, where he says he lived with a cousin on a two-month tourist visa.
When her visa was about to expire, a person who acted as an interpreter for her while she processed her papers helped her apply for asylum, claiming that she was being threatened by moneylenders in Sri Lanka.
He was granted an open work visa for asylum seekers, allowing him to work for almost any employer for a year.
According to her, she found work at a restaurant that finally agreed to sponsor her a work visa, which she believed would provide her with long-term stability.
But as asylum seekers generally cannot apply for other visas while their applications are being processed in New Zealand, the request was denied.
It was then that she contacted the Immigration and Secretariat Service company which, according to her, told her that she could apply for a new work visa from abroad.
Email correspondence seen by the BBC shows the company's director, Sylviane Gallant, stating that she would begin the process as soon as Ranasingha left the country.
So he booked a short stay in the Cook Islands while the application was processed.
It turned out to be a disastrous decision.
He was denied a work visa again. Furthermore, by leaving New Zealand, he had breached the terms of his current visa. The New Zealand authorities made it clear that they would not grant him any visas in the future.
"Kafkaesque" situation
Gallant claimed to have intervened on their behalf on several occasions, including writing to politicians such as Chris Penk, then New Zealand's immigration minister. But ultimately, Ranasingha claims Gallant admitted the situation was his fault and told him there was "nothing else he could do."
"He told me that it was best for me to return home. There was nothing to keep me there, so I agreed to go."
But when he arrived at the airport with an Air New Zealand ticket to Sri Lanka in hand, he was told he could not board without a transit visa for New Zealand.
He then had three transit visa applications for New Zealand rejected. The authorities indicated that they were not convinced that the applicant would leave the country. He also had four transit visa applications for Australia rejected.
In one of his rejection letters, New Zealand suggested he explore other options. However, both the US state of Hawaii and the French Polynesian island of Tahiti informed him that he would have to provide biometric information before any visa could be processed, and that this could only be done in person in New Zealand.
His latest application to travel to New Zealand, which included full details of the alternative routes he had been trying, as well as his son's upcoming wedding and his mother's poor health, was also rejected.
"I have lost a lot of money in banknotes. I have been applying for visa after visa without success for almost four years," he says, bursting into tears.
Image source, AFP via Getty Images
On a group of islands known for their long sandy beaches and rugged volcanic peaks, just four hours from Auckland, Ranasingha has been an involuntary guest.
She acknowledges that she is luckier than other people in her situation, since her hotel allows her to stay free of charge in the staff rooms and the neighbors provide her with food and clothing.
According to him, one of the hotel directors even gave him a sewing machine, which allowed him to earn a small income.
"My mother always tells me that I must have done something good to be in a place like this, where people have been so kind to me," he told the BBC.
But this does little to alleviate the feeling of being trapped.
Ranasingha says stress is affecting his health: "I'm afraid something will happen to me."
"To be honest, I don't know what their solution is," says Alastair McClymont, an immigration law specialist based in Auckland.
According to him, she received "terrible advice" that "certainly" could not have come from a genuine immigration lawyer, pointing to a sector of "so-called immigration advisors" who charge for submitting applications without fully understanding the risks involved.
Ranasingha claims to have paid thousands of New Zealand dollars in fees to the Immigration and Secretariat Service company. The BBC attempted to contact Gallant but received no response.
McClymont suggests that the New Zealand authorities will not grant him a transit visa because, according to them, he has no intention of returning to Sri Lanka after applying for asylum on the grounds that his life was in danger there.
New Zealand is coordinating with its neighbor Australia, which means Australian authorities will not want to allow transit either, he says, and France and the United States are likely to reach similar conclusions.
To leave, "you will have to stop somewhere and no one will want to take the risk."
Sri Lanka's role
New Zealand's immigration service told the BBC that it had received several transit visa applications from Ranasingha, all of which were denied "because we were not satisfied that he had a genuine intention to transit through New Zealand."
When asked why she could not be granted this benefit even when Ranasingha had offered to be handcuffed and escorted, a representative from the Immigration Minister's office responded that such measures do not prevent people from filing an asylum claim.
Australia's Home Office stated it would not comment on individual cases. It added that anyone who is not an Australian citizen traveling to Australia "must comply with the requirements of the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994."
Meanwhile, Ranasingha's family has been trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government can help them. His brother says they have tried "every possible avenue... but so far we have achieved nothing."
Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry told the BBC it was "taking all necessary measures to facilitate his return to Sri Lanka from the Cook Islands.
"Officials at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Wellington, New Zealand, as well as relevant New Zealand authorities, are working closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this matter."
But Ranasingha's brother is deeply worried.
"His mental state is not good," he told BBC Sinhala.
"On one of the occasions we spoke, he told me that if they were not willing to bring her home alive, they could at least repatriate her body."
Additional reporting by Kethaki Masilamani and Julianna Khan
image source, Courtesy
If you have been affected by issues related to suicide or feelings of despair, you can find information about organizations offering advice and support in the UK through the BBC Action Line. If you are looking for help and support outside the UK, you can check out Befrienders Worldwide.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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