Sri Lanka has asked retail giant Amazon.com Inc to take down bikinis, briefs and doormats featuring the nation’s lion flag from its Web site, authorities said on Sunday, two days after it protested the Chinese-made products.
The country is highly sensitive to what it sees as any misuse of its national flag, as well as Buddhist symbols.
Sri Lanka said it had lodged a formal protest with the online retailer and asked Chinese authorities to end the manufacture and sale of similar products.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The company which marketed the product on Amazon was requested by letter from the embassy to immediately cease selling the doormats and any such products, misusing the Sri Lanka flag,” the Sri Lankan embassy in China said in a statement.
The Sri Lankan embassy in Washington said it had also taken up the issue, and had complained to the US government over what it called a “violation of intellectual property rights” of the nation.
However, two days after Sri Lanka’s intervention, dozens of retailers were still selling the items.
Several Chinese vendors on Amazon were offering the non-slip doormat at prices ranging from US$10 to US$24, and the lion-printed briefs and bikini from US$9.20 to US$17.30.
“This is how the Chinese see Sri Lanka,” a person wrote on Facebook.
Another said that the doormat was a forewarning of how future relations might play out in light of Sri Lanka’s huge debt to China.
“May be it’s the sign [of how] they gonna treat us when we fail to pay their loans,” they wrote.
“If we are unable to pay our debts, they will print our flag on toilet paper for sure,” another person wrote.
In 2010, Sri Lanka prevented US rap star Akon from visiting over one of his music videos, which featured scantily clad women dancing in front of a Buddha statue.
Two years ago, a Muslim woman was arrested for wearing a dress with prints of a ship’s steering wheel, which police mistook for Dharma Chakra, a Buddhist symbol.
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