Boycott of electronics store planned

Middle Eastern rights group accuses Aurora retailer of profiling

Bob Jackson, News Staff Writer

Friday, October 19, 2001

A store clerk's suspicion about customers asking about shortwave radios has sparked a boycott and a planned picket by a Middle Easterner's rights group.

Ziyad Sarsour, 49, a Palestinian immigrant who became a naturalized citizen in the early 1970s, said that he, his 14-year-old son and a friend were subjected to racial profiling at an Aurora Circuit City store.

As a result of the incident, the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace and other groups are planning a boycott and to picket the store at 1450 S. Abilne St. at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Sarsour said his complaint apparently had the unintended consequence of getting the clerk fired.

"The district manager called me and told me they fired the clerk. My intention is that Circuit City and other places need to have diversity training in order to deal with things like that. Racial profiling has no business being in this country," Sarsour said.

Sarsour; his son, Nihad; and a friend, Zuhair Mahd, who is blind, went to the store about 4 p.m. Sunday to buy a computer hard drive.

"While in the store, Mahd asked if they have shortwave radios because he wanted to listen to the news," Sarsour said. "The clerk asked another clerk in the radio section and he said no. He told us to go to Radio Shack."

As the group left the store with the hard drive they were confronted by police.

"They said, 'Let's see your ID,' " Sarsour said. "We showed them. Then when I asked why, they told us that someone in the store called and said there were some Middle Eastern-looking people looking for scanners to monitor air-traffic and police movement."

Sarsour said that when he asked police to enter the store to see who reported them, they refused.

"In the meantime, everybody in the store came out, and we became a circle," he said. "Everybody looking at us with four police officers surrounding us. They must have thought we were criminals. We were humiliated and embarrassed. My son was traumatized. And he was born in the United States."

A coalition spokesperson said the demonstration is to "ensure that all Americans . . . regardless of race, color or creed . . . can shop peacefully and that they are asking store officials to publicly and formally apologize to the trio."

Contact Bob Jackson at (303) 892-5399 or jacksonb@RockyMountainNews.com.