Sikh Celebrity Refuses to Fly Home
Waris Ahluwalia stopped resisting rigorous airport security checks a long time ago.
The well-known Sikh American designer and actor says he’s grown accustomed to multiple bag searches, invasive pat-downs and incessant swabbing.
He’ll even let you massage his feet for foreign objects without protest.
After passing through two comprehensive screenings before his Aeromexico flight from Mexico City to New York City on Monday morning, he thought he was ready to board his plane. But security personnel thought otherwise.
“The security person said, ‘Now, will you take off your turban?’” Ahluwalia told The Washington Post, noting that he’s unsure of whether the man was employed by the airport, the airline, or both. “I said, ‘I won’t be taking off my turban here.’
“A group of Aeromexico employees spoke among themselves in Spanish and then one guy came back to me wearing an orange vest over a suit and said, ‘You will not be flying Aeromexico and you will need to book a flight on another airline.”
Instead of getting angry, the 41-year-old — who several years ago become the first-ever Sikh American model in a national Gap ad campaign — turned to social media, where he used his predicament to raise awareness about discriminatory airport screenings.
On Instagram, he wrote: “I was told I could not board my @aeromexico flight to NYC because of my turban.”
A second photo showed a somber-faced Ahluwalia standing in front of the airline’s customer service desk in Mexico City.
“My turban and beard represent my commitment to equality and justice,” Ahluwalia said in a statement distributed by the Sikh Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of followers of the monotheistic faith, which originated in South Asia in the 15th century. “If security personnel would like to respond with bigotry and fear then I will take another flight that’s more inclusive.”
He’s now refusing to fly another, “more inclusive” airline, too.
“At this point,” he said, “I realize that this isn’t about my convenience or getting home for lunch today. I realize that if I walk away, somebody else was going to go through this experience again.”
He added: “It doesn’t feel like a choice I can make. I don’t think I can just get on that plane.”
He’s refusing to leave, he told The Post, until the three demands — noted in a Sikh Coalition tweet — are met.
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