Sydney // An Apple manager has apologised to six teenagers of African descent after staff kicked them out of an Australian store citing concerns they “might steal something”.
A video of the incident, recorded by one of the students from Maribyrnong College in the southern city of Melbourne, went viral on Facebook. It was viewed almost 60,000 times after it was posted on Facebook on Tuesday with the caption “simply racism”.
“These guys [security guards] are just a bit worried about your presence in our store,” an Apple employee at the store at Highpoint shopping centre is heard saying in the footage.
“They are just worried you might steal something.”
When one of the high school students asked why they would steal something, the employee said, “end of discussion, I need to ask you to leave our store”.
Apple Australia confirmed on Thursday that the store’s manager had apologised to the students and their school principal Nick Scott when they returned to the shopping centre on Wednesday.
Mr Scott said it was not the first time his students, who were at the mall dressed in school uniform, were treated in such a manner.
"If you speak to these kids they say they have experienced this before," Mr Scott told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper.
“At Highpoint [shopping mall] two weeks ago they asked to try out some self-propelled scooter and the guy told them, ‘No, you can’t, legally I can’t let you try it out’.
“They walked away and turned around and another kid was using it.”
Some of the six boys were born in Australia, and had parents who were migrants or refugees, Mr Scott said. The school itself is located in one of the poorest and most multicultural suburbs in Melbourne.
This is not the first time that videos capturing alleged racial abuse in Australia have gone viral online.
In April, a Sydney train passenger was praised after defending a Muslim couple who were racially abused on a carriage, while in July 2014, a woman was punished with a good behaviour bond after ranting at an Asian passenger on a Sydney train journey.
* Agence France-Presse
