The Council to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination of Mexico City (Copred) issued recommendations to self-service stores to eradicate the discrimination and persecution of racial profiling such as appearance and skin color in self-service stores in the capital.
Geraldina Gonzalez de la Vega, President of Copred explained that the advisory opinion 01/2024 arises from the request of civil society and derived from 14 complaints of people who demanded treatment discrimination based on skin tone, race, clothing and appearance, as well as national or ethnic origin.
“This is a general advisory opinion, which means it does not deal with a specific case. This opinion is based on 14 cases, some of which are complaints received by the Council and some of which are complaints received by the Racistometer,” he stressed.
He stressed that this advisory opinion aims to make visible and denormalize certain practices that have been identified in self-service stores in Mexico City, and will be sent to the Ministry of Economic Development (Sedeco) and the Ministry of Citizen Security (SSC) as they are the competent authorities in the matter.
He reported that the recommendations will be sent to the National Association of Self-Service Stores (ANTAD), Walmart SA de CV, the Mexican Association of Private Security Companies (AMESP) and the United Security Groups for Mexico (ASUME), since they are responsible for preventing, eliminating and sanctioning racial profiling in self-service stores.
González de la Vega said that among the recommendations stands out that the stores recognize and make visible the existence of discrimination; adopt the “Decalogue and Guide to Non-Discrimination Services” prepared by Copred and comply with the standards and guiding principles on human rights.
In addition to establishing the prohibition of discrimination in a textual manner, it also complies with the obligations to prevent discrimination in the Law on Commercial Establishments of Mexico City, such as staff training and the placement of a license plate, among others.
What are the penalties for discrimination?
The official stressed that if the companies do not comply or do not want to compensate for the damage, Copred will issue aa legal opinion to the mayor’s office where the establishment is locatedwhich will be able to impose a fine of between 13 thousand and 2.5 million pesos. However, he stressed that the aim is for companies to respect the measures to prevent the occurrence of a repeat offence and to repair the damage.
According to Copred, racial profiling It is when a person inside a self-service store or at an institutional level, are considered suspicious or discriminated against because of their appearance, the tone of their skin, their ethnic or national origin, their way of dressing, their religion, etc., and not because of their behavior.
Some of the contexts where racial profiling can occur are law enforcement, justice systems, and surveillance systems.
Jose Antonio Aguilar, The general director of Racismo MX stressed that people’s human rights are disrupted by racism and discrimination in self-service stores, but especially by the racial profiling.
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“There is no objective behavior that justifies excessive searches, detentions or arbitrary inspections of people, their bags, their backpacks, which is illegal. And this practice is not limited to self-service stores, it also disrupts migration, based on certain characteristics we think about what a Mexican is like by how they look and that is also used to arbitrarily detain people,” he said.