Prominent journalist and human rights activist Agather Atuhaire has said she is now safe and back home after what she described as a distressing experience with Dutch immigration officers at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, an incident that has drawn condemnation from the Human Rights Foundation (HRF).
In a statement shared on her X (formerly Twitter) account on Saturday morning, Atuhaire recounted being subjected to prolonged questioning by immigration officers who allegedly questioned the authenticity of her passport, leading to delays that caused her to miss her connecting flight.
According to Atuhaire, the officers formed doubts about her passport without first examining it properly.
“Hi friends. I am well now and safely back home,” Atuhaire wrote.
“Immigration officers in Amsterdam looked at me and thought I can’t have a genuine passport. They hadn’t even opened it. Held me back for so long apparently ‘verifying’ my passport that I missed my flight.”
She added that even after suggesting officers check her travel history, including stamps and visas, they insisted such documents could be forged.
“When I told them to check the passport because it has stamps and visas, they said those can be forged too,” she wrote.
Atuhaire, who has travelled through Schiphol Airport on multiple occasions, said she was surprised by the treatment despite her travel record being verifiable in the system.
“I have passed through Schiphol airport over 10 times. If they had cared to look at the passport and checked my name in the system, whatever doubts they had would have been cleared without undue delay and anguish,” she said.
She further alleged that the verification process was only completed after her flight had already departed, after which she was informed she would be rebooked on a flight departing 24 hours later.
“Anyway, they finished ‘verifying’ long after the plane had left and said I should be grateful they are getting me another ‘free flight,’ like they had found me stranded without a flight back home,” she wrote.
Atuhaire said she was left without clear support during the delay.
“When the ‘free flight’ they got me was 24 hours later, they told me to either wait at the airport or figure out where to spend the next 24 hours. No explanation. No remorse. No apology,” she said.
She added that the experience triggered significant emotional distress.
“I don’t know if it was the anger or anxiety that made it very difficult to breathe or even utter a word and caused me a breakdown,” she wrote.
Atuhaire described the incident as troubling and suggested it reflected racial profiling.
“It is very unfortunate that in 2026 there are people that still simply look at others and assume they are fraudsters or something,” she wrote.
“Luckily, good friends came to my rescue and also redeemed the reputation of the Dutch just a bit.”
She also confirmed that a formal complaint had been filed.
“We have already filed a complaint and raised the issue in many fora. I hope that at the very least they never racially profile any other person like that again,” she said.
The Human Rights Foundation condemned the incident, saying it reflected careless treatment by Dutch immigration authorities and raised concerns about profiling.
According to HRF, Atuhaire had been travelling from Oslo, Norway, after attending the 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum organised by the foundation, en route to Nairobi via Amsterdam when the incident occurred.
HRF said she was stopped at passport control after a KLM flight delay from Oslo and that officers allegedly seized her passport without proper examination before initiating verification checks.
The organisation stated that Atuhaire attempted to explain her extensive travel history through Amsterdam and urged officials to verify her identity through their systems, but was allegedly ignored.
After about 30 minutes, HRF said she was cleared and escorted to a KLM desk where she was rebooked on a flight departing 24 hours later, without apology or accommodation.
The Foundation said the incident triggered emotional distress linked to Atuhaire’s reported abduction and torture in Tanzania in May 2025.
HRF called for a full investigation and said both Dutch immigration authorities and KLM should issue apologies and compensation for the distress caused.
The Dutch authorities and KLM had not issued a public response by the time of publication.