At the time, a friend had asked Mdm Du to bring four nephews along to Europe where their parents were.
Despite her husband's reluctance, Mdm Du went ahead with it as she felt that the boys, already teens, could take care of themselves.
While transiting in Dubai and waiting to board their flight to Rome, the group was stopped by airport officials and detained.
The couple was subsequently brought to a room where they were interrogated and starved with no food and drinks for three days.
The Dubai authorities had accused the couple of abducting children and using counterfeit passports.
All their belongings were confiscated and they had no way to contact the outside world.
Mdm Du said, "I told them the passports were legally issued in Singapore but they refused to believe me. They insisted I pay US$4,000 for a visa and wanted me to sign a stack of documents written in Arabic."
After the three-day ordeal, Mdm Du was sent to another detention centre and separated from her husband.
"The moment I got to the detention centre, a fierce policewoman made me clean the ceiling with a mop. I told her I was pregnant but she made me climb a ladder and clean the room."
Mdm Du eventually fainted from exhaustion and was sent to a hospital. By then, her baby had no heartbeat and she suffered a miscarriage.
Despite this, Mdm Du was sent back to the detention centre the next day as the authorities there "would not pay for her hospital stay".
A mere few days later, she was ordered to take on cleaning duties again.
Extortion was also commonplace at the centre.
Mdm Du said, "One night, a policewoman took me to a dark corner and asked me for $10,000 Dirham (about S$3,500). I told her I didn't have any money and she demanded that I call my family to send the money over immediately. I refused."
Mdm Du reveals that all the people held at the detention centre were foreigners. In her room were people from Canada, South Africa, Uganda and Indonesia.
"They were brought here for all kinds of alleged offences. Some of them have already been there for eight months when I arrived", she said.
During their detention, the couple attended court 14 times and was eventually informed that the four boys in their care have been sent back to their parents in Europe.
The couple's passports were later found to be authentic and their charges were dropped.
But the Dubai authorities quickly decided to charge them again for bringing the boys with them. It is apparently against the local laws to have with them children that were not their own.
These charges were also eventually dropped and the couple was acquitted, but they still found they could not leave the country as the detention centre had lost their passports.
The centre however, denied any responsibility and insisted that the couple had lost their own passports.
Mdm Du only managed to contact the Singapore embassy in Dubai for help in the eighth month of her detention.
This was after a kind policewoman gave her the embassy's contact number.
With help from the Singapore embassy, the couple eventually returned to Singapore on 18 October last year.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
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