Qatar has apologised after female passengers were forced off a plane to be strip-searched and examined due to a newborn baby being discovered at an airport.
The women, including 13 Australians, had been due to fly from Doha to Sydney when they were told to disembark and taken to three ambulances on the tarmac. Paramedics then checked them for signs they’d given birth.
Human rights activists described the invasive vaginal examinations conducted under duress as equivalent to sexual assault, while Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne indicated that the incident was ‘beyond circumstances in which the women could give free and informed consent’.
Qatar offered no immediate explanation of how officials decided to conduct searches of the women. Sex or a pregnancy outside of marriage is illegal in the country, and abandoned babies are not uncommon.
Today Qatar’s Government Communications Office issued a statement to say authorities discovered the newborn ‘concealed in a plastic bag and buried under garbage’ at the airport.
It called the discovery an ‘egregious and life-threatening violation of the law’. It noted that officials searched for the baby’s parents, ‘including on flights in the vicinity of where the newborn was found’.
The government went on: ‘While the aim of the urgently decided search was to prevent the perpetrators of the horrible crime from escaping, the state of Qatar regrets any distress or infringement on the personal freedoms of any traveller caused by this action.’
‘His Excellency Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior of the State of Qatar has directed that a comprehensive, transparent investigation into the incident be conducted.
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‘The results of the investigation will be shared with our international partners. The State of Qatar remains committed to ensuring the safety, security and comfort of all travelers transiting through the country.’
An Australian woman, in her 60s, previously told The Guardian Australia how she was the only female passenger to avoid an examination, likely because of her age. She described seeing a young woman come out of an ambulance ‘crying and distraught’.
She said: ‘My legs were just wobbling. I was just so pleased to be back on the plane because I was terrified they were going to take me away somewhere.
‘Why didn’t they explain to us what was going on? It was horrible, not knowing, to me that was one of the worst parts of it.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/28/qatar-apologies-for-strip-searching-female-passengers-after-baby-was-found-13492004/