Pretty Yende, a South African opera singer, claimed on Tuesday that French customs officers treated her with “outrageous racial discrimination” at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport.
Pretty Yende, described her experience at the airport as “traumatizing” after being “stripped and searched like a criminal offender.”
She didn’t disclose why she was detainedat the airport , but a French police source stated the singer had travelled from Milan without a visa using a South African passport.
An airport source said Yende was kept for “verification” grounds that had nothing to do with her skin colour and was released an hour and a half later.
Pretty Yende shared this on her instagram:
“The battles that I go through each and every second of my #prettyjourney would shock you. I bet you can’t spend a second walking in my shoes and the sacrifices made in order to show up anyways. I’m grateful nonetheless and I am most determined to share my Gift wholeheartedly to as many souls as possible and for as long as I live. I’m glad that I’ve been let free and I can sing my 4th performance tomorrow. Big thanks to the #prettyarmy that fought me out of that ‘prison’ 🦅YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE🦅”
“Police brutality is real for someone who look like me. I’ve always read about it on the news and most of my brothers and sister end up being tortured and some fatal cases make headlines and dead bodies suddenly appear with made up stories . I am one of the very very luck ones to be alive to see the day today even with il-treatment and outrageous racial discrimination and psychological torture and very offensive racial comments in a country that I’ve given so much of my heart and virtue to and still determined to do so as a legal International citizen on the global stage community. I’m still shaken thinking that I am one in a million who managed to come out of that situation alive because of one phone call I thought of at the time as I was in shock and traumatized and couldn’t believe what was happening to me. They took all my belongings including my cellphone and told me to write down phone numbers of my close family and friends to call with a landline phone they had on the retention cell, they said they were going to take me to a ‘prison hotel’ in the meantime while they looked at me like I was a criminal offender. I said, my phone battery is dying, might you have a charger by any chance? The police officer said ‘ listen to me carefully, you will not have your phone… I said what…he continued, listen to me until I finish with a very harsh and condescending tone… I replied…” am I a prisoner?… he rudely said yes… and I decided to comply and just do what they say and not try to ‘defend’ my legal self and this in French soil, I was stripped and searched like a criminal offender and put on the retention cell on terminal 2B customs control Charles de Gaulle, Paris. It was cold in there, there was no light at the beginning, cold and grey and they left me there alone with the landline phone and a piece of paper they gave me to write down phone numbers of those I could call, most of them refused to address me in English, there were more than 10 police officers I could hear talking and laughing down the hallway..”
Citizen
