Warsaw, Poland: A unique Court case is taking place in Poland of a Sikh taking the Polish Airport Security to Court for disgracing Sikh travellers passing through Poland.
The actions started in Oct 2009. Sikhs travelling through Polish airports were being told to remove their turbans for security check – the turbans were then placed on the x-ray scanner and passed through it. No amount of requests that turbans be checked with hand held scanners, or by pat downs were accepted. The Guards seemed to take delight in telling many hapless passengers ” take it off, else you will not fly…”
In my case – as a fluent Polish speaker, having graduated from a Polish University, over 30 years ago and having worn my turban through all these years, I was not prepared to sit back & “take this”. After explaining many times to the hierarchy of the Polish Border Guard in a series of letters and in several face to face meetings, I decided that I could rest. Warsaw has many Sikhs, a SIkh Gurudwara, which is officially registered as a formal place of worship. The Sikh Community was outraged but seemed to be helpless. I wrote a huge number of letters to many concerned people: the Polish Ambassador in India, the Polish Ambassador in the UK, recruited the support from many senior Polish officials and the many colleagues that I studied with. All attempts to reach some form of dialogue with the Komandant of the Border Guard failed. Even the intervention of the Polish Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who having been a Delegate at the Polish Indian Trade Summit (Sept 2010) and having heard from the highest Officials in India (HH Preneet Kaur) that more respect could be given to the Sikh Community’s distres, was unable to move the Polish authorities.
Consequently having got the support from the Helsinki Foundation of Poland, and with pro bono support from one of the best Polish legal Houses, we launched a Court Case against the Komandant of the Border Guard Service that conducts security check at airports. This gained a lot of publicity of the issue. And a lot of sympathy too. No Sikh was trying to evade the security check…all Sikhs were asking for was to conduct the check in a dignified manner – if scanner or othjer evidence suggested that a security threat existed, then all law abiding people would naturally submit to all other intrusive checks – some fact that the Komandant of the Security Service seemed totally deaf to,
Most interestingly, as the case developed, the Airport Security Gurad turned vindictive – the more the publicity about the injustice, the more they became emboldened to demand stripping off Sikh turbans. Even on the official web site of the association of the Border Guard started to carry insulting and demeaning discussions and some of them directed personally to me !! To cap it all off one of the authors in the e-forum of the Border Guard set up a discussion challenging me by name, yet hiding behind his anonymity in the e-discussion!.
with thanks : SikhSangat : link above for detailed news. Mailed to us by : SHAMINDER PURI.
