As diplomatic outrage grows between Australia and Qatar over the treatment of female passengers in Doha airport, several victims decided to speak out.
The story began when a new born baby was found at a trash can in Hamad International Airport in the capital, Doha. Authorities decided to force all female passengers, that were thought to include the mother of the baby, to undergo close and intensive body examinations, including cervical analysis, to define who the mother was.
The incident involved 18 women on a flight from Doha to Sydney including 13 Australian citizens. Passengers from 10 flights leaving Doha on the evening of 2 October were affected.
Wolfgang Babeck, a passenger on flight QR 908, told CNN that there was "a very tense atmosphere" on the plane when the women returned from the tarmac.
"One lady was crying," he said. "The others they were shell-shocked, nobody could believe what had happened. It was such a private and delicate issue. You don't want to share that with people."
He said the women had left the plane "in good faith, relying on the instructions of the crew."
Although the exact details of the incident have not been released, CNN affiliate Seven News previously reported that women were "forced to undergo an inspection in an ambulance on the tarmac."
On another hand, the British 'Guardian' quoted Kim Mills was one of the women taken off from the airport, and the only one not to be strip-searched as authorities hunted the mother of the abandoned newborn baby.
She described the “terrifying” experience, saying:“They told me to step forward, to go into the ambulance, and as I stepped forward another officer came round and stood in front of me and said: ‘No, no, you go, you go’,” Mills told Guardian Australia.
“And as I was standing there with this officer telling me to go, a young lass came out of the ambulance and she was crying and distraught.
“I just turned around and started walking with her trying to comfort her. I said, ‘What’s wrong, what’s going on?’ And she told me that they’d found a baby in the bathroom at the airport and they were examining all the women.
“I was the luckiest one on the whole flight because I have grey hair and I’m in my 60s. They probably looked at me and thought well, that’s impossible, it could not be her.”
Later, other women on the flight told her they were told to remove their underwear in order to be examined.
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