Airport tells faithful to take off turbans, veils
By Robyn Ironside
February 26, 2008 12:01am
Article from: The Courier-Mail
SECURITY at Brisbane Airport has gone into a spin after an unprecedented crackdown on turbans and other culturally-sensitive headgear worn by passengers.
A federal investigation has been launched into an edict by the company in charge of the airport's security to demand passengers remove for security checks religious headwear, including turbans, veils and Jewish skull caps.
At least one international flight was delayed at the weekend when staff from the company, ISS Security, demanded 13 people of the Sikh religion remove their turbans and a Muslim woman to take off her face veil.
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development is investigating whether the clampdown by ISS breached federal airport policy.
It is standard airport practice around the world that religious headwear is only removed after conventional screening methods raise an alarm.
But ISS employees yesterday said a directive was issued on Saturday demanding all passengers remove their religious headwear for security checks, regardless of whether there was any cause for suspicion.
"We were told you have to take them off, or you'll be stood down," one worker said.
The edict, which was reversed late yesterday after inquiries by The Courier-Mail, follows revelations about weak screening and regular weapons breaches at Brisbane Airport.
The concerns include two knives being found on passengers who had passed through security checkpoints and broad failures of screeners to monitor passengers and baggage.
Airport security staff have also allegedly helped themselves to grog surrendered by travellers, drinking it at parties, taking it home and raffling it.
A spokesman from the Brisbane Sikh Temple at Eight Mile Plains said a member who worked at the airport had brought the matter to their attention.
"We're extremely concerned," said the spokesman.
Vijaypal Singh of the Australian Sikh Association said he had never heard of such a security measure at any airport in the world.
An ISS spokesman said if workers believed they had been ordered to remove headgear of all passengers there must have been a misunderstanding.
"The practice has always been not to remove headgear worn for cultural or religious reasons unless there is a security concern, such as the metal detector sounding," he said.
A federal transport department spokesman said concerns about the procedures at Brisbane Airport would be investigated.
Airport spokesman Jim Carden said security measures requiring the removal of headgear after a security alarm had been in place for a decade.
Late yesterday airport security staff were issued with a directive stating that headgear was only to be removed if an alarm had been triggered.
It apparently followed an incident involving three Indian men, who were told to remove their turbans but refused.
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