A border control officer at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague forced an ultra-Orthodox woman to remove her head covering in front of numerous passengers and shouted at her during passport control in what is being described as a serious antisemitic incident.
The incident took place early Monday, around 4 a.m., ahead of a Ryanair flight from Prague to London that was scheduled to depart at around 6 a.m. The woman was traveling with her husband to London’s Stansted Airport.
While passing through passport control, the woman’s husband, who holds a European passport, went through the EU citizens’ lane without difficulty. The woman, who holds only a British passport, was directed to the non-EU passport control lane, where the incident occurred.
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An Orthodox Jewish woman wearing a headcovering; for illustration purposes
(Photo: Mayan Nemanov/Shutterstock)
According to her account, without any explanation or apparent reason, she was ordered to remove her head covering. The woman said she felt a genuine fear of being detained and therefore complied with the demand, despite describing the experience as humiliating and deeply distressing.
In an interview with the Haredi news site Behadrei Haredim, the passenger described the incident: “First he told me to take my hand out of my pocket. Then he yelled that I was leaning on his table, ‘That’s not allowed.’ Then he looked at my passport and told me to take off my head covering. I told him I’m not allowed to, and he said to me, ‘Take it off.’ So I told him I’m a religious Jew and I can’t take it off.”
She went on to recount the degrading moments: “He yelled again, ‘Take it off.’ I was so afraid they would arrest me that I just took it off. He said it was fine and let me through. I told him that what he made me do was demoralizing. He looked at me coldly and didn’t say a word. He just ignored me.”