Indian-American Waris Ahluwalia was travelling from Mexico City to New York’s fashion week when staff stopped him boarding the Aeromexico flight because of his religious headwear.
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While that’s not exactly an apology, Ahluwalia-who was in Mexico City for its annual contemporary art fair Zona Maco-seems to be taking the incident in stride. They searched his bag, swabbed him and patted him down. Then, he said, was asked to remove his turban. Posters in the New York City subway that featured Ahluwalia wearing a turban were defaced with racist comments.
He was then told that he would be denied access to his flight and would have to book another one.
In a statement on Monday, Aeromexico said it was obligated to comply with “all federal requirements established by the US Transportation Security Administration Ageny (TSA) for screening passengers on US-bound global flights”.
“That is not something that I would do in public”, he told the news outlet. Turbans, a religious head covering for Sikhs, are to be removed only in the privacy of their homes.
The actor, who starred in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and is a practicing Sikh whose religion requires him to wear a turban in public, posted an update to his Instagram account on Tuesday.
Actor and designer Waris Ahluwalia shared the information via an Instagram post yesterday.
“We have offered the passenger (two) alternatives to reach his destination as soon as possible”, spokesman Amilcar Olivares said. “We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused by this incident”.
Ahluwalia wrote that turban was the reason he could not board the AeroMexico flight.
A statement released by the airline said it “renews its commitment to transport all passengers regardless of their religion, social status or gender. I’m not going to chase the guy in the airport and get arrested in Mexico”, he said.
“That was the moment I realized that if I didn’t say anything, if I didn’t do anything, if I didn’t step out of my comfort zone, that this could happen again to someone” else, Ahluwalia said. It’s not the first time that a Sikh has been profiled as a security threat.
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“That’s all I wanted, and here it is in a few lines – it’s right there in black and white”, he said.
