Credit, Personal collection
When Ruchira Ranasingha left Sri Lanka almost ten years ago, she could never have imagined that she would end up stranded on a small archipelago in the South Pacific.
The 50-year-old woman has been trapped in the Cook Islands for three years. She tells the BBC that she is desperate to return to Sri Lanka and even offered to travel "handcuffed, bound and gagged".
Ranasingha hoped to settle in New Zealand. After applying for asylum in the country, she claims to have followed the recommendation of an immigration consultant and temporarily left the country to apply for a work visa.
However, when he arrived in the Cook Islands, his application was rejected. Furthermore, when leaving New Zealand, she failed to comply with the conditions of the visa she already had, linked to her asylum application.
Now, New Zealand is refusing to issue a transit visa that would allow her to stopover in the country to fly back to Sri Lanka.
Australia is also refusing to issue the document. The only other international destinations she can fly to from the Cook Islands — Tahiti and Hawaii — require her to provide biometric information in New Zealand before any visas can be processed.
As a result, she has no viable possibility of leaving the archipelago.
"My only son is getting married in November, and I really want to be there at the wedding. My mother is so worried about what happened to me that she is in and out of the hospital," she says, through tears.
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"I'll do anything you ask me to do. I just want to go home."
Credit, AFP via Getty Images
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Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018 after being forced to close her small t-shirt factory due to a decline in business. Having difficulty paying loans, she moved to Hong Kong, where she started working as a carer for the elderly and children.
Her brother told the BBC she was facing enormous financial pressure. He added that her husband was a drug addict and died about seven years ago.
In December 2022, Ranasingha went to New Zealand, where he claims to have lived with a cousin during a two-month visit, on a tourist visa.
When the document's validity period was about to expire, she says that an immigration interpreter helped her apply for asylum, claiming that she was being threatened by creditors in Sri Lanka.
She received an open work visa for asylum seekers, which allowed her to work for virtually any employer for a year. According to her, she got a job at a restaurant, which ended up agreeing to sponsor a work visa, which she believed would guarantee her greater long-term stability.
However, as asylum seekers are generally unable to apply for other types of visas while their applications are being considered in New Zealand, the application was rejected.
It was then that she contacted Immigration & Secretarial Services, a company that, according to her, informed that it would be possible to make a new application for a work visa from abroad.
Email exchanges seen by the BBC show the company's manager, Sylviane Gallant, saying she would begin the process as soon as Ranasingha left the country.
So she booked a short stay in the Cook Islands while her application was processed. But the decision turned out to be disastrous.
What went wrong with the visa
She had her work visa application rejected again and, by leaving New Zealand, had breached the conditions of the visa she already held. New Zealand authorities made it clear that they would not grant her any other visa in the future.
Gallant said he made several interventions on Ranasingha's behalf, including writing to politicians, including Chris Penk, who at the time was New Zealand's immigration minister. According to Ranasingha, however, Gallant eventually admitted that the situation was her fault and said that "there was nothing more she could do."
"She told me I'd better go home. There was nothing keeping me there anymore, so I agreed to leave."
However, when she arrived at the airport with an Air New Zealand ticket to Sri Lanka in hand, she was told she could not board without a New Zealand transit visa.
Three transit visa applications to New Zealand were rejected. Authorities said they were not convinced she would leave the country. Four applications for transit visas to Australia were also denied.
In one of the denials, New Zealand suggested that it look for alternative routes. But both the US state of Hawaii and the island of Tahiti, in French Polynesia, informed her that she would need to provide biometric data before any visa could be processed — and that this could only be done in person in New Zealand.
Her most recent application to New Zealand, which included full details of the alternative routes she had tried, as well as information about her son's upcoming wedding and his mother's poor health, was also rejected.
"I lost a lot of money on tickets. For almost four years, I've just been applying for one visa after another, without being able to resolve anything," she says, breaking down in tears.
Credit, Jeff Overs/BBC
In an archipelago known for its long sandy beaches and towering volcanic peaks, just four hours from Auckland, Ranasingha became an unwitting guest.
She says she is luckier than others in a similar situation: the hotel allows her to stay in staff accommodation for free, while local residents, sympathetic to her situation, provide food and clothing.
According to her, one of the hotel directors even gave her a sewing machine, allowing her 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," she tells the BBC.
But this does little to alleviate the feeling of being trapped. Ranasingha says the stress is affecting his health. "I'm afraid something will happen to me," he says.
"To be honest, I don't know what the outcome of her case would be," says Alastair McClymont, an Auckland-based immigration law expert.
She received "terrible guidance" that "certainly" could not have come from a legitimate immigration lawyer, he claims.
McClymont draws attention to a sector of "so-called immigration consultants" who charge to file applications without fully understanding the risks involved.
Ranasingha says he shelled out thousands of New Zealand dollars in fees paid to Immigration & Secretarial Services. The BBC contacted Gallant but did not receive a response.
McClymont suggests that New Zealand authorities do not grant the transit visa because, from their point of view, Ranasingha has no intention of returning to Sri Lanka as he has lodged an asylum claim claiming his life is in danger in the country.
New Zealand coordinates its actions with neighboring Australia, which means it may not want to allow it to make a stopover on its territory either, he says. France and the United States would likely reach similar conclusions.
To leave the Cook Islands, "she will have to stop somewhere, but no country will want to take that risk."
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What the authorities say
The New Zealand Immigration Service told the BBC it had received several applications for a transit visa from Ranasingha, all of which were rejected. "We were not convinced that she had a genuine intention of transiting through New Zealand," they said.
Asked why a visa could not be granted even after Ranasingha had volunteered to travel in handcuffs and under escort, a representative from the Immigration Minister's office said such measures do not prevent a person from applying for asylum.
Australia's Department of Home Affairs said it would not comment on individual cases. It said, however, that all foreigners traveling to Australia "must comply with the requirements of the Immigration Act 1958 and the Immigration Regulations 1994".
Meanwhile, Ranasingha's family has been trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government can help. His brother says they have resorted to "all possible means, but so far it has not been possible to make any progress on this issue."
Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry told the BBC it was "taking all necessary steps to facilitate his return to Sri Lanka from the Cook Islands".
"Officials from 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 to resolve the issue," they said.
But Ranasingha's brother is deeply worried.
"Her psychological state is not good," he told the BBC. "In one of our conversations, she told me that if they weren't willing to bring her home alive, they could at least repatriate her body."
Additional reporting by Kethaki Masilamani and Julianna Khan
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