Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Detention at airport

This refers to the detention of 12 Indian nationals by the Dutch authorities at the Amsterdam airport. One wonders what would have happened had the detaining authority been India and the ones detained Westerners! Would the Indian authorities have handcuffed them? Would any of the Western governments have tolerated such humiliation of its citizens?

Sutirtha Sahariah,
New Delhi

* * *

Terrorist threats, real or perceived, have reached a new high. Air passengers could not have failed to notice increased security measures and lower thresholds for suspicious behaviour. It is, therefore, not difficult to anticipate the reaction of airline crew to a potential threat. Racial profiling is indeed regrettable. But does not the incident involve a group of passengers that behaved strangely? The passengers seem to have brought the incident upon themselves. There was no need for India to react in the manner it did.

Rajesh Krishnamurthy,
Simsbury, Connecticut

* * *

Cell phones are known to disrupt navigation signals and passengers are asked to switch them off. When some not only keep their cell phones on but talk animatedly and disobey crew instructions, other passengers are bound to feel threatened. What our government should do is educate passengers on the need to follow instructions during air travel.

S. Srinivas,
Visakhapatnam, A.P.

* * *

It is surprising that regular air passengers exchanged seats on a high-tech and high security risk transport medium, creating a needless diplomatic ruckus!

N. Dharmeshwaran,
Guduvancherry, T.N.

* * *

As observed in the article "Are Asians facing a witch-hunt in mid-air?" (Aug. 25), will two white men conversing in an unknown European language frequently glancing at their wrist watches suffer the same fate as that of the two Asian students on the flight from Malaga to Manchester? It is right in concluding that creating a climate of paranoia will only mean a victory for terrorists.

Rashid G. Khan,
Aligarh, U.P.

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