There is nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning to give you the whistle for an ice cold beer.
At least that’s what the owners of the Rickshaw Bar looked like when they opened a Vietnam-themed watering hole in Melbourne, Australia – in an area of the city known as “Little Saigon”.
Now community members are calling the unit for its “painful and insensitive” decorative motif, including glass cups filled with bullets, used dog tags, discarded military aircraft supplies and references to the Agent Orange chemical weapon, which the US used to remove the cover forestry and crops for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops during the 20-year war.
Rickshaw Bar customers are asked to “sit in a booth or bunker at the bar.”
“There is no smoke without fire,” read other signs.
The media-Asian-Australian website Liminal magazine on Tuesday shared a harsh critique of the concept on Twitter.
“Imagine a war in which over a million people died and then imagine deciding to create an aesthetic out of it, to sell cocktails full of bullet shells, with the theme Agent Orange.” they wrote in a tweet who saw the support of nearly 1,500 on Twitter.
“My family is still suffering from PTSD and you thought it was a good idea to capitalize on their pain.”
Since 1954, the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, has lost millions of lives, including 58,000 American soldiers, about 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, about 1.1 million North Vietnamese fighters, and Viet Cong and a staggering 2 million civilians who were caught in the crossfire.
“In a year when anti-Asian racism has risen dramatically, this bar has opened * in Richmond *, a suburb with a strong Vietnamese population, including people who have literally fled this war *. It’s horrible, “Liminal continued in his post.
According to a reply to the tweet, Melbourne’s restaurants did not immediately find out why the bar could be considered problematic.
“What is also worrying is that none of the editors from @concreteplay and @UrbanListMELB saw a problem. @UrbanListMELB even wrote: “no objections from us” ” they pointed out, highlighting stories that present the new unit.
Following the reaction on social networks, Rickshaw Bar removed from their feeds offensive images and ads.
“We have removed our content and apologize to anyone who was offended or found the content inappropriate,” the bar wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “We have revised our tone and we are working hard to do this right. We are sorry for any suffering caused – it was never our intention. “
Before removing the material from Instagram, their page was flooded with critics, accusing the bar of “trivializing the trauma of other people”, according to Independent, which obtained screenshots of the comments before the removal.
“My family still suffers from PTSD and you thought it was a good idea to capitalize on the pain,” said a struggling bartender.
Despite the war that finally ended in 1975, the Vietnamese continue to live with its remains, including unexploded mines that still injure and kill innocent people today. Traces of the orange agent – a mixture of herbicides linked to life-threatening diseases, including cancer, leukemia and Parkinson’s – also have persistent effects on the country’s people and the environment.
The controversy comes at the end of a year that has seen renewed prejudices against Asian populations related to the Chinese origin of COVID-19. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, anti-Asian attacks have increased globally, with a 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans only between 2019 and 2020, according to a new analysis published by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. a non-partisan policy and research group.