Pregnant Kiwi reporter ‘forced’ to ask Taliban for refuge, slams MIQ system

A pregnant New Zealand reporter has said that she was forced to ask for refuge in Afghanistan after being denied an MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) spot.

The MIQ is an important step implemented by the New Zealand government to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). It is meant for people who are coming back to New Zealand from abroad, to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

The journalist Charlotte Bellis was reporting on Afghanistan for Al Jazeera. Bellis wrote an open letter in New Zealand Herald in which the reporter said that she discovered she was pregnant in September while in Qatar, where Al Jazeera’s headquarters are. She quit her job in November seeking to return to her home country to give birth to her child. But that’s where the problems began, the former reporter said.

Bellis said that she had to go to her partner’s country Belgium as it is illegal to be unmarried and pregnant in Qatar. She said she kept trying to get to New Zealand but couldn’t succeed in getting an MIQ spot through New Zealand’s lottery system.

Bellis said she could not overstay in Belgium since she was not a resident and had nowhere else to go but Afghanistan. So, she organised a meeting with senior Taliban contacts and told them about her situation. The Taliban told her she and her partner will be safe in Afghanistan.

“No we’re happy for you, you can come and you won’t have a problem. Just tell people you’re married and if it escalates, call us. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” the Taliban told her through a translator, Bellis said in her article.

She had gained fame after asking the Taliban, when they seized power in Afghanistan in August last year, what they will do to protect women’s rights.

The journalist said despite her numerous attempts, and the doctors telling her that it is unsafe to give birth in Afghanistan, her application for an MIQ sport was rejected on January 24. Among the reasons given were that the couple’s travel dates were more than 14 days away and she did not provide evidence she had scheduled medical treatment in New Zealand.

“I thought about sending them a story I did in October at a maternity hospital in Kabul where they had no power so were delivering by cell phones at night. They couldn’t do caesarean deliveries and the only medicine they had were tabs of paracetamol wrapped in crinkled newspaper,” Bellis said in her open letter, describing her ordeal and the situation in Afghanistan.

She further said that New Zealand’s Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins got involved, after which her application’s status in MIQ website changed to “under review” from “rejected”.

Bellis then questioned the entire process and claimed they were getting a preferential treatment “because of who we are and the resources we have”.

“The decision of who should get an emergency MIQ spot is not made on a level playing field, lacks ethical reasoning and pits our most vulnerable against each other,” she said in the article.

The New Zealand Herald also published a statement from Hipkins, where he said that a senior National Party MP contacted him after which he asked officials to check Bellis’ case. “The rejection of her application appeared at first sight to warrant further explanation,” he said.