Forced air passengers to gynecologist test when newborn child was found...

The child was found in a toilet at Hamad airport on October 2. One of the departures with Qatar Airways to Sydney was connected to the discovery. As a result, several female passengers on board were taken off the plane and taken to ambulances parked at another part of the airport.

Inside the ambulances, they were forced to undergo gynecological examinations, writes Seven Network News.

Australian authorities are reacting sharply to what has happened.

– This was rude, offensive, outrageous and very worrying. I have never heard of anything like this, said Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne at a press conference on Monday.

She says that Australia has protested to the Qatari authorities through the country’s ambassador, but that they have not yet received a response.

One of them was too old

Kim Mills had already fallen asleep on the plane before departure. Then she was awakened and ordered out. But she was the only one who was taken off the plane who did not have to undergo a gynecological examination.

“I am over 60 years old and have gray hair, so when I was taken to one of the ambulances, they stared at me and assumed that it was unlikely that I could be the child’s mother,” Mills told The Guardian’s Australian edition.

She says that the women who had to undergo the examination were strongly affected and despaired.

13 women were taken off the plane

Another of the passengers who witnessed the incident told the Australian broadcaster ABC that the women were very upset.

– They could not believe what had happened. They told us they were forced to undress downstairs. Then they were examined to check if they had just given birth to a child, Wolfgang Babeck says to the TV channel.

Thirteen women with Australian citizenship were taken off the plane, out of a total of 34 passengers on board. The health workers who conducted the surveys were women. The departure was delayed by three hours.

Concerned about health

The management was Hamad airport says in a press release that they were worried about the health of the child’s mother. That must have been the reason why they took women out of the plane and into gynecological examinations. They write that they only took out women who had had access to the area at the airport where the child was found, writes Reuters.

After arriving in Australia, the women received medical and psychological treatment. What happened to the women before the departure of Qatar Airways Flight 908 to Sydney is now being investigated by Australian police.

The infant who was found in the toilet must be in good health, but the mother has still not been found. The child is being cared for by social workers and health professionals in Doha, writes Reuters.

Infidelity is punished

Qatar is a small but oil-rich country in the Arabian Peninsula. Sex outside of marriage is prohibited and is considered a criminal act.

In 2016, a Dutch woman was arrested in Qatar on suspicion of infidelity after she reported a rape.

Female migrant workers have on several occasions hidden their pregnancies and tried to travel abroad to give birth. To avoid imprisonment, other women have left their newborn child in the hope that it can be taken care of by others, writes AP.