OPERA singer Pretty Yende was allegedly arrested and mistreated by French police.
The soprano shared the disturbing news on Instagram, saying she now knows how a prison cell feels like after she was arrested and treated like a criminal.
She was travelling to Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, where she’s been having a show.
Pretty said she never shared the outrageous and inhumane experiences she had gone through, but she couldn’t keep quiet this time.
Before detailing her arrest, she said she has always read about police brutality and she’s glad to be one of the people who made it out alive and that she wasn’t brutally interrogated and physically tortured.
“Police brutality is real for someone who looks like me. I’ve always read about it and most of my brothers and sisters end up being tortured and some fatal cases make headlines. I am one of the very lucky ones to be alive to see the day today even with ill-treatment and outrageous racial discrimination and psychological torture and very offensive racial comments in a country that I’ve given so much of my heart and virtue to and still determined to do so as a legal international citizen on the global stage community,” wrote the singer.
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Pretty said the police took all her belongings and said they were taking her to a prison hotel.
“They took all my belongings including my cellphone and told me to write down phone numbers of my close family and friends to call with a landline phone they had on the retention cell. They said they were going to take me to a ‘prison hotel’ in the meantime while they looked at me like I was a criminal offender,” she said.
Pretty said she was then told she was a prisoner and she needed to comply with everything they said.
She said she was stripped and searched and they refused to address her in English.
“It was cold in there. There was no light. They left me there alone with the landline phone and a piece of paper they gave me to write down phone numbers of those I could call. Most of them refused to address me in English. There were more than 10 police officers. I could hear them talking and laughing down the hallway,” she wrote.
South Africans on Pretty’s comments section were angry, but the singer said they shouldn’t hate.
“Please dear friends and dearest followers, I thank you so much for your love in the matter I just shared. Let’s keep it at that... In love, no hatred whatsoever, you know me. Love Anyways,” she wrote.
