// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
I've been stuck on a tiny Pacific island for years and can't get a transit visa to fly home
When Ruchira Ranasingha left Sri Lanka almost a decade ago, she could never have imagined she would end up stranded on a tiny archipelago in the South Pacific.
The 50-year-old has now been stuck in the Cook Islands for three years. She tells the BBC she is desperate to go back to Sri Lanka and has even offered to go "handcuffed, bound and gagged".
Ranasingha had been hoping to settle in New Zealand.
After seeking asylum there, she says she followed an immigration adviser's recommendation to temporarily exit the country to apply for a work visa. But once in the Cook Islands, her application was rejected. And by leaving New Zealand, she had breached the terms of her existing asylum-linked visa.
Now New Zealand is refusing to issue her a transit visa that would allow her to fly home to Sri Lanka.
Australia is refusing too. The only other international destinations she can fly to from the Cook Islands - Tahiti and Hawaii - require her to give biometric information in New Zealand before any visa can be processed.
"My son - my only child - is getting married in November 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 says through tears.
"I will do anything they ask of me - I just want to go home."
Ranasingha left Sri Lanka in 2018 after being forced to close her small T-shirt factory due to a loss of business. Struggling to repay loans, she moved to Hong Kong to work as a domestic caregiver looking after elderly people and children.
Her brother tells BBC Sinhala she had come under immense financial pressure. Her husband was a drug addict who died about seven years ago, he adds.