MELBOURNE, Australia – Five Australian women have sued the Qatari government two years after they were ejected from a plane and subjected to invasive medical procedures as part of an investigation into the abandonment of a newborn baby. in the bathroom at the airport.
While Qatar has said it will review the protocols, the women say they want the country to enact policy changes to prevent a repeat of what happened to them.
Their lawyer, Damian Sturzaker, said that court papers were filed in Australia last week and served on the state-owned Qatar Airways on Thursday, and legal papers will also be sent. to the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority. The women are looking for unspecified damages and costs.
Qatar Airways, the aviation authority and the government communications office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Five women were among more than a dozen people who were escorted off a Qatar Airways flight by gun-carrying bodyguards after the infant was found at Hamad International Airport, in the Qatari capital, Doha, in October 10, 2020.
Some of them were forced to remove their underwear and subjected to invasive tests to see if they had given birth recently, one of the women said. told The New York Times in 2020while older women press their stomachs.
Five women, aged between 33 and 75, are suing Qatar Airways and the Civil Aviation Authority over what they call unlawful physical contact and mental trauma that continues to this day.
All five had or continue to suffer from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to documents filed with the High Court in the Australian state of New South Wales. Women’s names were suppressed by the court.
One of them, a 33-year-old nurse, said in an interview that she hasn’t traveled since. “That day, it completely changed who I am,” she said.
“Looks like they just moved on, they don’t regret it,” she added. “They went on with their lives normally while we were all here, quite affected. It’s really not fair.”
The women had previously written to the Qatari authorities and filed a complaint with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in which they allege their human rights had been violated. That complaint is still open.
After a preliminary investigation, the Qatari government said in a statement that “task forces” are reviewing airport procedures to identify potential vulnerabilities, “address them and ensure that any breaches are avoided in the future.”
Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani offered his “most sincere apologies for what some female tourists have had to go through as a result of these measures”.
The nurse says the women are looking for “personalized and meaningful” apologies to address the trauma they have suffered and continue to suffer. Also, she said, they want proof, not just assurance, that protocols will be changed.
“They have assured us that the law has changed and that a situation like this will not arise again, but we have not seen any evidence of that, so we do not believe that anything What has changed,” she said.
Legal documents say that the women are suing Qatar Airways under the Montreal Convention, in which an airline is liable for bodily harm to passengers, and that “an act of compensating for death damages death or injury may be brought before the court at the destination of the aircraft. “
When the treatment of women was first reported, it sparked outrage and distrust in Australia, with the foreign minister at the time condemning it as a “disgusting set of events”. crude, disturbing, offensive, concerning”.
Government of Qatar said in a statement at the time that it “regrets any distress or violation of any traveler’s personal freedom as a result of this action”. It added that “the purpose of the urgently decided search was to prevent the perpetrators of the terrible crime from escaping.”
Qatar’s human rights record is under new supervision as it prepares to host the soccer World Cup in November. It is facing questions about whether it welcomes gay fans and about the deaths of migrant workers on projects Cup-related construction or not.
