There is nothing like the smell of Napalm in the morning whistling an ice cold beer.
At least the owners of Rickshaw Bar seem to be thinking when they open a waterhole in Vietnam, in Melbourne, Australia – in an area of the city known as ‘Little Saigon’.
Now members of the community are calling the agency for its ‘hurtful and insensitive’ decorative motif, including bulletproof vials filled with bullets, used dog tags, disposable equipment for military aircraft and references to the chemical weapon Agent Orange, which the American infamous used. eliminate forest cover and crops for North Vietnamese and Vietnamese troops during the 20-year war.
Customers at Rickshaw Bar are urged to “sit in a hut or bunker at the bar.”
“There is no smoke without fire,” read other signs.
The Asian-Australian media site Liminal on Tuesday shared a fierce critique on Twitter about the concept.
“Imagine a war where more than a million people died, and then imagine that you decide to create an aesthetic out of it, to sell cocktails filled with bullet casings, with an Agent Orange theme,” wrote them in a tweet who saw the support of nearly 1,500 on Twitter.
“My family still suffers from PTSD and you think it’s a good idea to take advantage of their pain.”
Since 1954, the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, has lost millions of lives, including 58,000 U.S. troops, approximately 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, approximately 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Vietnamese fighters, and an astonishing 2 million civilians. trapped in the crossfire.
‘In a year where anti-Asian racism has increased dramatically, this bar * opened in Richmond *, a suburb with a strong Vietnamese population, including people who would have literally * fled * from this war *. It is appalling, “Liminal continued in his post.
According to one response to the tweet, the stores in Melbourne did not immediately determine why the bar could be considered problematic.
“What is also worrying is that none of the editors at @concreteplay and @ UrbanListMELB saw a problem. @UrbanListMELB even wrote: ‘no objections from us” ” pointed them out, highlights stories that showcase the new venture.
Following the setback on social media, Rickshaw Bar has since removed the offending images and ads from their feeds.
“We have removed our content and apologized to anyone who takes offense or finds the content inappropriate,” the bar wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “We have reviewed our tone and are working hard to correct it. Sorry for the need – that was never our intention. ‘
Before the material was taken down on Instagram, their page was flooded with criticism, accusing the bar of ‘trivializing other people’s trauma’, according to the Independent, who got snapshots of the comments before removing them.
“My family still suffers from PTSD and you think it’s a good idea to take advantage of their pain,” said a grieving bartender.
Despite the war that finally ended in 1975, the Vietnamese continue to survive with its deadly remains, including unexploded landmines that still injure and kill innocent people today. Traces of Agent Orange – a mixture of herbicides associated with life-threatening diseases, including cancer, leukemia and Parkinson’s, also have long-term consequences for the country’s people and the environment.
The controversy comes at the end of a year in which new prejudices against Asian populations took place, linked to the Chinese origins of COVID-19. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, anti-Asian attacks have risen worldwide, with a 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans alone between 2019 and 2020, according to a new analysis by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism was introduced. , a non-partisan research and policy group.