Offboarded at gunpoint, subjected to invasive strip search: Why five Australian women are suing Qatar Airways
On 2 October 2020, a newborn baby was found abandoned in a women’s bathroom at the Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar.
What followed was a nightmare for several female passengers who were waiting for their flights to take off.
Armed personnel entered ten Qatar Airways aircraft parked at the terminal and asked female passengers to come out. The women were then taken to ambulances parked on the tarmac. Inside the ambulances, female nurses forced some of them to take off their pants and undergarments for a gynecological examination.
The aim was to figure out which woman had recently given birth, so as to, zero down on the abandoned baby’s mother.
The women belonged to various nationalities. At least 18 of them were Australians who were on a Sydney-bound flight at the time of the incident.
Five of these women have now filed a lawsuit against the state-owned Qatar Airways as well as the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority seeking damages for the trauma they went through.
Forced gynecological examinations of Qatar Airways female passengers
For Anna*, the legal action is about “fighting for basic human rights.”
“We also want an apology and an assurance that this incident is never repeated be it by Qatar Airways or any other airline,” she told Firstpost.
The lawsuit comes at a time when Qatar’s human rights record is under the scanner as it hosts the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Fans have been barred from wearing clothes in support of the LGBTQ community while activists have been raising concerns over the rights of migrant workers and women.
Meanwhile, 38-year-old Anna said she has been seeking therapy for the mental trauma she endured because of the invasive searches.
Recalling the incident, she said, “I was travelling with my 5-month-old baby boy. We waited for four hours for our flight to take off. Then armed personnel holding automatic guns entered the aircraft.”
“The captain announced that they received some instructions from Qatar Airways that female passengers have to leave the plane with the security guard. We did not have our phones with us,” she added.
“Most of us were crying, we thought we were being kidnapped or there was a terrorist attack but we weren’t given any answers. When we reached the tarmac, we saw several ambulances and were asked to enter one of them alone. I went inside with my boy.”
Once inside a female nurse asked Anna to lie down and take off her pants and underpants.
“My child was too young to sit so as I laid down, he laid on top of me the nurse forcibly removed my underpants. She saw my C-Section scar and realised it was fresh and asked me to leave,” Anna said.
A global outrage & fight for justice
Once the women reached Australia, the incident became public triggering global outrage.
Two years down the lane, Anna along with four other women decided to take legal action after “it became crystal clear that nothing has been done.”
Months after the invasive searches, Qatar handed over a suspended jail term to an airport official following a criminal investigation.
The women have filed a lawsuit in the New South Wales Supreme Court in Australia under the Montreal Convention. Both Australia and Qatar are part of the convention that establishes airline liability in the case of death or harm to passengers.
The lawsuit documents accessed by Firstpost said that all the five “applicants suffered from a range of mental health issues including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety” after the incident.
Damian Sturzaker, Partner at Sydney-based Marque Lawyers, the firm which is representing the women, knows that he has an uphill task.
‘Australian govt could have done more to help the women’
“You have schoolteachers, nurses from Australia taking on another country,” he told Firstpost.
When asked if the Australian government could have done more in connection with the incident, Sturzaker said, “very little has been done to support the women. The women cooperated with our (Australian) police who took their statement. These statements were provided to the Qatari authorities who were probing the incident.”
“The Australian government has the power to restrict the Qatar Airways landing slots in Australia and that will have a big impact,” he added.
Back in 2020, post the incident, then-Australian PM Scott Morrison called the strip searches “appalling and unacceptable.”
He added that his government will “continue to take a very strident approach” over the incident.
Qatari PM Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al-Thani expressed his “sincerest apology for what some female travelers went through,” a statement issued by the Qatari government on 28 October 2020 said.
“This was the first instance of an abandoned infant being discovered in such a condition at HIA – this egregious and life-threatening violation of the law triggered an immediate search for the parents, including on flights in the vicinity of where the newborn was found. 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 traveler caused by this action,” the statement added.
Anna said that no one be it the Qatari government or Qatar Airways apologised to the women personally.
As for the abandoned infant, she survived. According to a Guardian report, her mother was identified and she was not a Qatari national.
Thousands of football fans have been travelling to Qatar and Anna has a message for them.
“Keep your country’s consulate number handy and know your rights,” she said.
*Name changed at request
Firstpost tried to contact the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority but they were not reachable.
