There is nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning to whistle the whistle for a cold beer.
At least that’s what the Rickshaw Bar owners seemed to think when they opened a Vietnam-themed bar in Melbourne, Australia – in an area of the city known as “Little Saigon”.
Community members are now clamoring for the establishment for its “noxious and insensitive” decorative motif, including beer glasses filled with bullets, used identification tags, discarded military aircraft materials and references to the chemical weapon Agent Orange, which the US famously employed to eliminate forest cover and crops for North Vietnamese and Vietnamese troops during the 20-year war.
Rickshaw Bar customers are asked to “settle into a booth or bunker at the bar”.
“There is no smoke without fire,” said another sign.
Liminal magazine, an Asian-Australian media website, shared a strong criticism of the concept on Twitter on Tuesday.
“Imagine a war in which more than a million people died and then imagine deciding to create an aesthetic out of it, to sell cocktails full of bullet capsules, with the theme of Agent Orange”, they wrote in a tweet which was supported by almost 1,500 on Twitter.
‘My family still suffers from PTSD and you thought it would be a good idea to capitalize on their pain.’
Beginning in 1954, the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, saw millions of lives lost, including 58,000 US soldiers, about 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, about 1.1 million Vietnamese and Vietnamese fighters and an astounding 2 million civilians who were caught in the crossfire.
“In a year when anti-Asian racism increased dramatically, this bar was opened * in Richmond *, a suburb with a strong Vietnamese population, including people who would have * literally fled this war *. This is horrible, ”Liminal continued in his post.
According to a reply to the tweet, Melbourne restaurants did not immediately find out 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 objection from us,’ ” they pointed, highlighting stories that show the new establishment.
Following the reaction on social media, Rickshaw Bar has already removed the offending images and ads from its feeds.
“We removed our content and apologized to everyone who took offense or considered the content inappropriate,” wrote the bar on Instagram on Wednesday. “We have revised our tone and are working hard to fix it. Sorry for any anguish caused – it was never our intention. “
Before removing the material from Instagram, its page was flooded with criticism, accusing the bar of “trivializing the trauma of others,” according to the 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 their pain,” said an anguished bar-goer.
Although the war finally ended in 1975, Vietnamese people continue to live with her remains, including unexploded landmines that still injure and kill innocent people today. Traces of the orange agent – a mixture of herbicides with links to fatal diseases, including cancer, leukemia and Parkinson’s disease – also have long-lasting effects on the country’s population and the environment.
The controversy arises at the end of a year in which prejudice against Asian populations was renewed, linked to the Chinese origin of COVID-19. Since the beginning 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 released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremismo, a non-partisan research and policy group.