Photos: How Cameroonian was wrapped in plastic film and deported from Turkey

A video of a 47-year-old Cameroonian man wrapped in a cling film before being carried onto a Turkish Airlines flight for deportation has sparked angry calls for the boycott of the airline.

In the video, Emmanuel Fosso Someon Chedjou, a shoe seller from Douala, was seen screaming for help as his fellow passengers struggled to unwrap the clingy layers of plastic.

The video has triggered a wave of anger with many calling it “inhumane,” “shameful” or “racist”.

France24 Observers has reported that there were four separate videos of the worrying episode that had been circulating online since they were posted in mid-February.

The videos have sparked a national outcry in Cameroon.

The horrifying incident reportedly happened on the night of January 27, 2020, onboard Turkish Airlines flight TK667 between Istanbul and Yaoundé.

Chedjou shared documents with France 24 Observers, proving that he undertook the journey and that he was indeed deported from Istanbul airport.

France 24 Observers has said it confirmed Chedjou’s account from six other people who were also held in custody with the Cameroonian at the airport’s detention centre.

The shoe seller told the online portal that “I wanted to go to Dubai with my girlfriend to buy a shipment of shoes. I organised the entire trip through a travel agency. It was the first time I had organised such a trip and I only realised later that I had been scammed.”

“Our flight to Dubai had an eight-hour layover in Istanbul on January 21. When we arrived in Turkey, my partner stayed in the transit zone. I wanted to leave the airport to run an errand, seeing as we had an extremely long layover.

“When I got to the passport control, they told me that my transit visa was fake and arrested me. They brought me to a sort of detention centre. My partner was also there when I arrived; they had also arrested her,” he said.

From there, things moved quickly. His mobile phone was confiscated, and the immigration officers instructed him to sign several papers he could not read because they were in Turkish.

“I asked to speak to a lawyer and the officers, who were there, refused to let me. I don’t know who exactly these officers were–they might have been police officers, gendarmes or security officers. They weren’t wearing uniforms.

“Two days later, on January 23, they tried to deport me the first time. I protested, telling them that I wanted to go to Dubai as planned and one of the officers hit me. When we got to the walkway leading to the plane, I started yelling and protesting again. That’s when the staff and the pilot of the Turkish Airlines flight came out and refused to take me on board. They said I should be handed over to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

But that didn’t happen.

“Over the next few days, I was repeatedly beaten and threatened as the authorities pressured me to return to my country. Around 1 pm on January 28, they came to get me to put me on a flight to Yaoundé, Cameroon. I protested again and, this time, they brought me to a special room.

“There were about a dozen officers on hand and a group of them tried to control me. They put plastic ties on my wrists and ankles and then put on metal cuffs. Then, they stuffed my mouth with tissues and taped it shut.

“Then they took two giant rolls of plastic film, which is used in airports to wrap up suitcases. They wrapped me in layer upon layer from my neck to my feet and it was absolutely impossible to move. That’s when I started struggling to breathe.

“Three of them put me into a wheelchair and brought me to a plane leaving for Yaoundé. In the plane, they carried me like a package to my seat.

“When the passengers were all seated and the plane was just 15 minutes from taking off, I managed to spit out the tissues that were stuck in my mouth and I started screaming for help.

“The passengers immediately reacted when they saw me and started demanding that I be freed from the plastic. My girlfriend was in the plane as well and she managed to film two videos so we’d have proof of what happened.

“My clothes were ripped when I was struggling with the officers and I asked for my hand luggage so that I could change. I left my ripped jeans on the seat, which had 2,400 euros in cash in the pocket. I had been planning to use that money to buy shoes in Dubai for my business. When the officer gave me back my jeans, the pockets were empty. “You’ve been lucky so far,” the officer said. “We’re going to kill you.”

With the insistence of the passengers, he was brought down from the plane while his girlfriend continued the journey back home.

Not long afterwards, a flight attendant working for Turkish Airlines accompanied (from the detention centre) him to the airline’s counter at the airport.

“The flight attendant asked me why I was under escort and I told her it was unacceptable to treat people in this way, and that I was sick and needed medical care. She left me in the terminal in front of a Turkish Airlines counter with absolutely nothing. I had to beg to eat.”

“After two days, a man who claimed to be the head of staff at Turkish Airlines said to me, ‘We can’t give you the medical attention and you can’t stay in Turkey. You’re here, you can’t even wash. You are going to have to choose a country where we can send you and you are going to leave.’ Then officers came to get me to bring me back to the detention centre.

“One night, one of the police officers who had wrapped me up in plastic was delivering me a coffee and he told me that they were going to send me to Abuja, Nigeria. I told him that wasn’t my country, and that it was very far from my home. He said it was nearby,” he said.

Abuja is 800 kilometres, or 500 miles, from Douala.

“At that point, I was just exhausted. I couldn’t fight anymore and I just gave in. I took the boarding pass for the flight and they brought me into the plane in handcuffs. Once I was seated on the plane, they removed the cuffs and left.

“I left Istanbul on the evening of January 30 and arrived in Abuja on January 31. A woman I met on the plane helped me organise a driver to take me back to Cameroon. I finally got back home on February 4,” he said.

He claimed he lost the equivalent of €10,500 between the travel agency that scammed him and his stolen money at the Istanbul Airport.

The Cameroonian has since been on a mission for justice.

“No one wants to do business with me. I want to speak out against Turkish Airlines and the officers who humiliated me. I want compensation for everything I went through and, if possible, I’m going to file a complaint.