Dutch Immigration Officers and KLM On Spot For Mistreating Ugandan Human Rights Activist

 

By Asante Times Admin

Human Rights Foundation [HRF] condemned Dutch immigration officers’ careless treatment on prominent, award-winning Ugandan human rights activist Agather Atuhaire on Thursday at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, as she returned from the 2026 #OsloFreedomForum in Oslo.

The treatment Atuhaire received triggered serious traumatic mental distress from her well-known May 2025 illegal detention and torture in Tanzania.   

 

On Thursday, Atuhaire, a 2024 Oslo Freedom Forum keynote speaker, flew to Amsterdam’s airport from Oslo, Norway after attending the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum organized by HRF.

 

Her KLM flight from Oslo had been delayed and she was rushing to catch her connecting flight to Nairobi, Kenya. A Dutch passport control officer seized Atuhaire's passport without opening it and handed it to a colleague, saying that they needed to verify that it was not fake. 

 

She was escorted to wait outside an immigration office. Agather told HRF that her efforts to communicate that she had previously transited through Amsterdam multiple times, and her prompts to google her name and check her name in the system were ignored. After at least 30 minutes, two officers handed her back her passport and led her to a KLM desk where she was rebooked on another flight 24 hours later.

 

The officers did not apologize and asked her if she would pay for a hotel or sleep at the airport. KLM did not offer apologies or accomodation even though Atuhaire missed her connecting flight through no fault of her own. 

 

Atuhaire experienced an emotional breakdown during the incident, saying that it resurfaced trauma from her abduction and torture by Tanzanian security agents in May 2025.

 

"I tried to express my anger but couldn’t. I couldn’t speak. I suddenly had this sharp pain in my chest and collapsed the ground and started to shake and cry uncontrollably," she said.

This website understands that HRF has issued a call for a full investigation and believes Atuhaire is owed apologies and compensation by both Dutch immigration and KLM for undue emotional distress.