Strip searching women is routine in Australian prisons

Australians were justifiably outraged when they learnt last week that dozens of women - including thirteen citizens of this country -were taken off a Sydney-bound plane sitting on the tarmac at the international airport in Doha, capital of Qatar, and subjected to a strip search in an ambulance.

With no explanation as to why it was being carried out, this highly invasive procedure was applied to women passengers who'd been seated and waiting for take-off, as local officials were trying to locate the mother of a baby that had just been born in a terminal toilet and hidden in a rubbish bin.

Federal Labor shadow minister Joel Fitzgibbon perhaps put it best when he said, the action taken by Qatari officials "effectively amounts to state-sanctioned sexual assault".