On 2 September 2021 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) published on its Facebook page a “Happy Independence Day to Vietnam” in which it used the Vietnamese Communist red flag as marker to indicate the suburbs where Vietnamese Australians live.

As a Bureaucratic body of the Australian government, ABS would have had statistical information and knowledge that most Vietnamese living in Australia risked their lives to escape from the Communist regime and that the Communist red flag is a haunting image to them. Especially to those Vietnamese who fought against the Communist regime and such red flag including more than 60,000 Australian service men and women.

We, the Vietnamese Australians, do not celebrate the Vietnamese communist Independence Day and object to such Day. We commemorate the fall of Saigon annually on the 30th of April instead and the yellow flag of the Republic of Vietnam is the official flag of the Vietnamese Community in Australia. This flag has been recognised by several local councils in Australia.

The Vietnamese Community in Australia do not accept the Independence Day as depicted on the ABS Facebook page and this day is shameful and painful to us all.

We urgently urge the ABS to immediately remove this offensive and insensitive post from its Facebook page and to ensure that no such posts be repeated in the future.