Tom Neijens is a Swedish diplomat (first secretary of the Belgian representation to the United Nations) who decided about a month ago to eat, with his wife and baby, at the Country Club Metropolis golf club. They were not partners of the same and therefore asked if they could stay to eat.
They were given permission to eat on the terrace of the club and there Roseline, his wife, breastfed his daughter Luka. What happened next is worthy of a hidden camera episode or similar, because they ended up treating them like terrorists.
Go to the bathroom, please
The first thing that happened was that the manager quickly approached to try to prevent Roseline from continuing to breastfeed her daughterWell, I was disturbing the club members. They replied that it was only a moment, that the girl was going to take a short time, but the manager urged them to just feed him in the bathroom.
Neijens answered what anyone in his situation would say: "If you don't ask a person to go to the bathroom to eat, why do you ask a baby to do it?".
Someone called the police
Minutes later the police made an appearance at the club. Upon entering they shouted "Close the doors!" and they made someone who had nothing to do with the event leave the terrace. The approaching agent carried a Taser in his hand while he put the other in his gun. Apparently some people in the club thought they were terrorists, because they were carrying a black backpack.
At that time Roseline, the mother, burst into tears (not for less), and asked the police if it is normal for terrorists to enter with a baby in a fancy club. "In Sri Lanka, children are used by terrorists", the policeman replied.
Neijens, the father, finally showed his identification, his position, and the policeman relaxed telling them that they should understand their way of proceeding, because in that club they had had terrorist threats in the past, and accompanied the family outside the premises, coming out a back door.
Days later the diplomat contacted the Metropolis police department, looking for an apology that has not yet come. The police department spokesman explained, apparently, that it was a "cultural misunderstanding", adding that Tom Neijens was fuming, and that in this situation it seemed logical to think that the baby was a terrorist.
My opinion about it
It is not that I want to defend the actions of the manager and the police, but to know the facts we should see how Roseline was breastfeeding. There are ways and ways to do it, and Miriam, my wife, for example, always does it in a way that people barely realize that she does it (she has been talking to people who have said "ah, but if she is sucking! "If the manager arrived quickly to request that he stop doing so, it is because it was very obvious that he did And, I say, since you enter a luxury place, where they agree that you eat without being partners, try to bother as little as possible, especially knowing that there are people very "tiquismiquis".
Now, leaving this aside, it makes no sense that everything ended as it ended. The invitation to stop breastfeeding or to do it in the WC is a classic, and it is very disrespectful towards children, that they have the right to eat when they need it Because they are babies.
Just yesterday we commented on what mothers believe are the inconveniences of breastfeeding and the second most named was "It is uncomfortable to breastfeed in front of unknown people". Well, what we always say: you can go to the side of an advertising poster with a girl showing half tit, with an absurd pose and with the face of "it seems that she is giving me an orgasm" and seem normal and then see in the next bank to a woman breastfeeding her baby, with half a tit outside, and seem disrespectful. It is clear that something fails and it is clear that people's mentality must change.
Via | The Scholar's Blog, New York Post On Babies and more | They throw a woman from a Mercadona for breastfeeding her daughter, Adriana Abenia: "Several times I have been indigestible when I see a woman breastfeed her baby", Beyoncé is the new image of "Breast is Best", a campaign defending breastfeeding in public
