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Pretty Yende laments being stripped and searched at Paris airport
Yende said she was 'traumatised' but sources say she was only temporarily held because she did not have a visa.
Opera singer Pretty Yende recently lamented what she calls ‘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’ after she said she was stripped and searched at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. Picture: Instagram
South African opera star Pretty Yende on Tuesday accused French customs agents of treating her with “outrageous racial discrimination” at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, a claim strongly contested by police and airport sources.
“Police brutality is real for someone who looks like me,” the soprano, who is black, wrote on her Instagram account a day after arriving for a string of performances in Paris.
Pretty Yende, 36, said she was “traumatised” after being “stripped and searched like a criminal offender” at the airport.
“I am one of the very very lucky ones to be alive to see the day today even with ill-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,” wrote Yende.
She did not say why she was pulled aside for questioning, but a French police source said the singer had arrived from Milan on a South African passport without a visa.
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“At no moment were there any incidents,” the source said, adding that Yende had not been asked to remove her clothes.
She was released an hour-and-a-half later with a visa allowing her to enter French territory, an airport source said, adding that Yende was held for “verification” purposes that had nothing to do with the colour of her skin.
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Yende, who was born in the small South African town of Piet Retief, has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past decade, starring in operas from Vienna and Berlin to Barcelona and Los Angeles.
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The Citizen reached out to both Pretty Yende and her manager and had not received a response before publication.
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