In Spain recently, 150 passengers on board Monarch’s Malaga-Manchester flight staged a revolt, refusing to board the plane until two Asian passengers were removed [thanks Chickpea]:

The trouble in Malaga flared last Wednesday as two British citizens in their 20s waited in the departure lounge to board the pre-dawn flight and were heard talking what passengers took to be Arabic. Worries spread after a female passenger said she had heard something that alarmed her. Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches. [Link]

As the revolt spread, more and more passengers either refused to board or left the airplane. The staff responded, not by allaying people’s suspicions, but by removing the two men. They were not detained or charged, and flew back to the UK on a later flight:

… the aircraft was cleared while police did a thorough security sweep. Nothing was found and the plane took off - three hours late and without the two men on board. Monarch arranged for them to spend the rest of the night in an airport hotel and flew them back to Manchester later on Wednesday. [Link]

Conservatives in the UK called the passengers’ actions a victory for the terrorists:

Patrick Mercer, the Tory Homeland Security spokesman, said last night: “This is a victory for terrorists. These people on the flight have been terrorised into behaving irrationally. For those unfortunate two men to be victimised because of the colour of their skin is just nonsense.” [Link]

Can you imagine American conservatives defending the two men who were removed and criticizing the passengers for acting crazy? I’d plotz if I saw that on Fox News.

Unfortunately, this was neither the first case of this sort, nor is it likely to be the last:

Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding. [Link]

I saw no mention, in any of the stories, about who these men really were nor how they felt about the matter. Personally, I’m of the opinion that passengers who refuse to fly without already appropriately screened passengers should be the ones who are removed from the flight, not the two guys who were just sitting their minding their own business when mass hysteria descended.

It seems we might soon find ourselves with foreskin checks by the passengers, if not airport security. Kudos to the Tories for finding a way to both score political points and stand on principle at the same time!

UPDATE 1:

Here is some information about who the two were and what happened from their perspective [Thanks Jai]. It seems they were two British students of Pakistani origin who went to Malaga for a day trip. They say the whole incident happened because a little old lady got freaked out by them, and thought that the whole idea of flying to Spain for the day was suspicious:

Friends Sohail Ashraf and Khurram Zeb, both 22, … insisted they were just a couple of ordinary lads who wanted a bit of fun on a day trip to Malaga. They are so far removed from extremism that they even spent the day boozing and tucking into a McDonald’s burger. Khurram admitted: “As Muslims we are not supposed to drink alcohol, but we did have a few.”

The pair, studying for degrees at Manchester’s Umist institution, believe the scare was sparked by an elderly lady sitting nearby.
Khurram said: “We were chatting away in Urdu and she kept looking at us. At first I didn’t really take any notice. I just thought perhaps she’d never seen an Asian person before.”

Sohail added: “She had to move to let us sit down and I knew straight away that something was bothering her. I tried my best to ignore her but she started asking me questions like where we lived and how long we had been in Malaga. When I told her we had only gone for the day she became even more suspicious. She kept saying that was a strange thing to do. Suddenly she got up and walked toward the cockpit.” [Link]

BTW, they also say that they weren’t wearing heavy jackets either:

The friends deny claims they were wearing heavy leather jackets which aroused suspicion. They insist they merely had on light windcheaters, T-shirts and jeans. [Link]