Pretty Yende 'traumatised' by police brutality at Paris airport
“I’m still shaken thinking that I am one in a million who managed to come out of that situation alive."
South African opera star Pretty Yende was recently a subject of police brutality in Paris.
The singer took to Facebook to share the ‘horrific’ experience she had at the Paris airport on Monday.
She started her post by saying how lucky she is to be alive.
“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,” she wrote.
“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,” she added.
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The star detailed how she was arrested, stripped, and that police took her personal belongings.
“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.
“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,” she wrote.
She adds that she thought she was going to die.
“I was filled with so many negative thoughts, one was ‘ this is it, the day where my family will be served with a corpse and no one would know what really happened to me...” she wrote.
Read the rest of her statement below.
Image courtesy of Instagram/ @Pretty_Yende_Official