To be disgusted with Qatars assault on these women?

[ChristmasStocckings]

I'm honestly shocked at how these poor women have been treated and my heart breaks for them. How on earth did anyone think that this was ok? No one should be forced to have an examination that they did not consent too. There is no excuse for this behaviour.

www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/doha-dfat-registers-serious-concerns-after-women-pulled-off-plane-strip-searched/news-story/f4eb941d267c2211605238a574935995

If a woman had been raped and the suspect was on the plane, would every males penis be checked for signs of recent ejaculation?

Exactly . Of Course not . They forced it because they were women and they could

It is rich coming from Australia the way they treat aboriginal people.
Hardly anyone mentions the baby.
Do you get a consent if you are supect of drug mule in Australia.
The list is long, cut the crap

Imagine reading that women were sexually assaulted and immediately trying to defend it. How much must you hate women to think like this?
mumsy27 why didn't you start your own thread to talk about how much you hate Australia instead of belittling victims of sexual abuse?

I am really horrified that 4% of people voting think this is ok.

Would also be interested to know what the authorities deemed to be an adult woman in this case. If there had been young teenage girls on the flight would they have been violated too?

Because over there women are second class citizens. Just like in Spain, Japan, Iran, Egypt and many many other countries around the world. Blame religion and male ego.

@Brefugee

There was another article in the papers recently (can't find it now of course, I'm guessing it was the Grauniad as it's pretty much the only one i ever look at) about the unmarried foreign workers in Qatar who have given birth (usually as a result of rape or otherwise non-consensual sex imposed on them by their employers) who can't leave the country during this time because they first have to serve a prison term.

But they aren't allowed in the prisons which have reduced prisoner numbers due to Covid-19.

This is a country that has absolutely no care for women's rights, especially foreign and poor women.

As for the whataboutery and the "it's legal there" crew. Fuck off to the other side of fuck and while you're there look up the Fallacy of Relative Privation.

The only reasonably ok thing in all this is that apparently the baby is doing well.

That was the UAE:

amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/12/they-have-to-be-punished-the-mothers-trapped-in-the-uae-by-love-crimes

@sergeilavrov You are full of it. They are all monstrous regimes that don’t give a flying fuck about women. It’s been decriminalised, has it? Maybe if you have the right passport 🙄

It's irrelevant what nationality these women are, or what the laws of their own country is, the bottom line is that they were forced to have their bodies examined against their will.
There is absolutely no reason that I can see for a woman, any woman to be invaded in such a way to discern if she is post partum or not.
For all you who excuse this as ' being the norm ' would you willingly remove your underwear and open your legs ( sorry if that sounds crude ) for anyone else who you haven't sought medical advîce from? No? Why not? What's the difference?
Sadly, very sadly in Qatar, females are seen as none entities, they have no voice and no rights whatever their nationality, as with many other gulf states, and indeed, many other countries.
I hope the mother is never found, because god help her if she is! And that both her and the baby are doing well.
I also hope that all the women involved in this terrible, degrading experience find a way to overcome their trauma.

@mumsy27

It is rich coming from Australia the way they treat aboriginal people. Hardly anyone mentions the baby. Do you get a consent if you are supect of drug mule in Australia. The list is long, cut the crap.

The possibility that any of these women could've been Aboriginal clearly didn't occur to you as you flailed in whataboutery. Nice erasure of indigenous peoples that.

@Orcus

Such a shocker that this thread ended up getting derailed...

Yes, who could have seen that coming?!

Perhaps until we are, as women able to unite against any barbaric treatment of women - regardless of where it happens in the world - and are able to actively stand up for our own rights, this kind of thing will continue to happen.

It is never okay to violate women under any circumstances. I don't care if it is technically legal or not, it should not be allowed to happen anywhere in the world. The apologists on here should seriously hang their head in shame.

The possibility that any of these women could've been Aboriginal clearly didn't occur to you as you flailed in whataboutery. Nice erasure of indigenous peoples that.

Absolute classic.

One of the things (amongst many) that galls me about the apologists is that they are excusing the idea that one woman does something wrong (although I can well understand why she did, in that particular country) so it is fine to punish all the women in the vicinity. They're all responsible, just for being women.

I await the news some day that they found drugs in the men's toilets and dragged every male on the plane off for a body cavity search, with no other 'evidence' than that they were in a certain part of the airport and might have visited those toilets. And people clamouring to say that it's fine for them to be violated at gunpoint because a crime has been committed and no one is owning up. Somehow I feel like I'll be waiting a long time before I ever read a story like that.

Hardly anyone mentions the baby.

The law in Qatar has caused a newborn baby to be abandoned in an airport toilet, not be raised by their mum/parents, probably never to know their biological parents ...

And they've double downed on that law by inflicting an intimate, physical invasion and violation of a group of unrelated women's human rights.

That cover it for you?

Why do I suspect not.

And as for 'progress' this incident has set Qatar back by decades. What woman in their own right would ever live or travel there given that the persecution of women is still legally and actively happening in the country.

You can see posts like never whom state their dd and gds are there and it is all fine, you have to wonder if she has actually been there herself and seen the prison like settlements her dd will be living in, the fact she has to be chauffeured everywhere sounds glamorous doesn't it, but in reality there is no freedom or safety for women there. Things can turn at the drop of hat into something very frightening - there is a atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The actual reality is very far from safe, and maybe Qatar and others feel they are making leaps and bounds into the modern area of equality - but honestly it is moving at a snails pace, and after this incident it has actively slammed into reverse.

Appalling state sponsored sexual assault on innocent women.

Someone up thread said that embassies often try to help women in this position in the ME.

If she did seek help, would she be on a commercial flight out like this (seems like the birth happened unexpectedly/ prematurely) or would the embassies have access to non commercial flights (seems unlikely?

Perhaps she was being hustled out but the premature labour/birth happened and she was caught,post birth, in this horrendous situation.

Hardly anyone who's mentioned the baby has managed to correctly attribute blame for the situation that led to him or her being abandoned in a toilet: that is, the Qatari laws. Which suggests none of them really give that much of a shit, since the laws criminalizing extra marital births encourage more occurrences of baby abandonment and nothing will change until they do.

She may not have even realised she was pregnant til a few months in, some women don't (irregular periods, naivety etc.).

I didn’t mention the baby in my post, however, the only wish I have is that he is male. His life will still be restricted but it’s better than being female there.

What happened to these women was absolutely appalling. It's hard to see any justification for it and the excuse that they were worried about the mother's welfare is clearly bullshit considering that they have imprisoned unmarried mothers. I really hope that there is a huge backlash.

@Friendsoftheearth, yes I have been there regularly, daughters work there and drive themselves everywhere they want to go with no restrictions - apart from the horrific traffic jams, they have freedom to go where they want, when they want, as often as they want.

They have never felt unsafe - they say that they have felt more unsafe in some inner cities in the UK which they lived in for University, have lived in lots of different areas of Doha and in houses/appartments that no way could be called 'prison like settlements'. So the questions are have you lived and worked there? Are you talking from your own experiences or from what you have been told or read about?

Once again I do not condone any abuse of women/girls in whatever country in the world that they live in.

@Orcus

Hardly anyone who's mentioned the baby has managed to correctly attribute blame for the situation that led to him or her being abandoned in a toilet: that is, the Qatari laws. Which suggests none of them really give that much of a shit, since the laws criminalizing extra marital births encourage more occurrences of baby abandonment and nothing will change until they do.

I have mentioned this, multiple times. It’s a hard reality in the Gulf for women, particularly those from third-world countries. Very little we say is ever taken on board by these countries.

But you have no right to pass on your own trauma and suffering to someone else either. Child abandonment is still child abandonment, even if we can sometimes sympathise (I’m thinking of some recent cases in the UK where mothers have killed or abandoned their SN children)

I said hardly.

As for your second paragraph, the idea that the mother had options open to her that wouldn't involve passing on trauma and suffering is pretty fanciful. Women don't give birth secretly in bogs and then leave the babies there if they are both in their right minds and have better options open to them. The mother here is pretty clearly someone who was afraid of the consequences of giving birth any other way. What do you think the baby's experience would have been if she had gone to the authorities and served her prison sentence? You're going to need to be very clear about that before you can even think of criticising the mother's actions. I note also with interest that you've fuck all to say about the father here.

The woman didn't conceive the child without a man. Either she entered into consensual sex and he presumably abandoned her when the consequences of that became clear. Or she was raped.

One way or another, there was a man who abandoned this baby as well. And Qatar don't seem to be too bothered about finding him.

One way or another,

Yes I have never and we lived in a villa in a secure compound. Each villa had very tall concrete walls for privacy. It was beautifully manicured and serviced, but felt like a prison.

I was advised never to travel alone, and did not see any female driving by herself in the whole time I was there, so I have to wonder why your dd is doing it? It is unsafe, particularly after dark.

I was forced to dress extremely conservatively and was advised not to speak directly to men. Even my children (dds) were asked to cover up. They were 7 and 10 at the time and it was so unbelievably hot and uncomfortable - they just wanted to wear shorts and swim in the pool all of the time.

My most recent visit was even worse, and I won't go into what I was told by the staff working in a world class hotel, but needless to say the situation there for the workers is abysmal.

You might like to think your dd is safe never and no one likes to think their families are not safe, but honestly after this how can you even say that?

Any women that is pregnant and unmarried, even due to rape will be put into prison. That is what happens to them. Most are unable to leave without their employers permission, so what option do they have?

with respect lack of information here we have no idea from scant info as to whether the woman gave birth in the toilet cubicle or transported baby & abandoned it there (carried in bag its been done & nb! could be done by male in this case - maybe extreme family poverty & the mistaken hope of rich western taking baby?)
Its all speculation