The brouhaha over the brief detention of a Bollywood superstar at Los Angeles Airport in the US is uncalled for as such incident these days don’t require such extensive publicity. Perhaps the actor is not the only person to have been detained at the US entry point and since the Homeland Security Force does not necessarily discriminate between celebrity or the common man when it comes their concern over security.
It would be utterly foolish to assume that every security staff member at all airports globally must be familiar with who is who in the Indian film industry.
Just as much Shah Rukh Khan is a professional working in the film industry, the security personnel at the airports, too, have their accountability in looking after the safety of citizens of their country. You could pass as many times through these airports and still you are obliged to the requests for security checks.
It is time that everyone came to realise that it is in the best interest of everyone that security personnel do their job. Moreover, why is it so hard to understand that it is not the high ranking officials and rather it is the operational staff who are deployed at airports with the task of screening passengers. Any argument saying that the cause of delays in clearing an individual was intentional may not digest well with commonsense.
You might call it Islamophobia, racial profiling or other kinds of discrimination, but the reality is far from it. First of all we should agree that most parts of the Western world is gripped with a sense of paranoia in the aftermath of frequent terrorist attacks, which have resulted in beefing up their security measures even if it means many innocent individuals would be subjected to questioning and temporary detention.
I believe every traveller to a host country is bound by the rules of that country and such requirements have been conveyed to people by embassies or consulates. The comments by the actor that he whiled away his hours of detention by playing Pokemon Go somehow gives the indication that he was not harassed.
On the other hand, US officials could consider archiving such incidents in which they have had previously detained popular personalities or celebrities so that it can help them to better manage such situations without attracting media attention.
- The reader is an Indian business development coordinator, based in Dubai.