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Qatar forced to apologise after women passengers were subjected to invasive examinations

QATAR was forced to apologise today after it emerged that women passengers booked on 10 flights were subjected to invasive vaginal examinations at an airport in Doha. 

Authorities said that they were trying to identify who might have given birth to a newborn baby found abandoned at Hamad airport on October 2.

The invasive searches came to light on Monday after passengers contacted authorities in Australia. 

Following pressure from Canberra, Qatar’s government said it had begun an investigation into the treatment of women who were taking a Qatar Airways flight to Sydney.

The women were examined in an ambulance on the tarmac, according to Australia’s Seven Network News. 

A male passenger said that the women were taken from the plane regardless of their age, and that no explanation was given.

Beyond 13 Australian women, the nationalities of other women affected are not yet known.

Qatar did not offer an immediate explanation of how officials decided to perform the examinations. 

Human rights activists describe such examinations, conducted under duress, as equivalent to sexual assault. 

Today, Qatar’s Government Communications Office said that authorities had discovered the newborn “concealed in a plastic bag and buried under garbage” at the airport.  

The statement said officials searched for the baby's 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 traveller caused by this action,” the statement added.

In Qatar, sex outside marriage is a criminal act. Migrant workers in the past have hidden their pregnancies and tried to travel abroad to give birth, others have abandoned their babies anonymously to avoid prison. 

On Tuesday, Australia’s Foreign Ministry described the incident as “inappropriate and beyond circumstances in which the women could give free and informed consent.”

The ministry declined to label it sexual assault while awaiting further details from Qatar, but opposition politicians in Australia have done so.

Foreign department secretary Frances Adamson told a senate hearing today that an Australian diplomatic official had been on the flight heading to Sydney, but was not subjected to an exam and reported the incident to the ministry immediately.

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