Optus has been forced to remove signs written in Arabic from a south-west Sydney mall after staff at the store was threatened, the company says.
The calls for the signs to be removed from Casula Mall came after a customer posted a picture of the poster advertisement on the Optus Facebook page saying:
"Can I just ask why Optus is advertising at Casula Mall in middle eastern language and not in English? This is an outrage, this is Australia not Syria. You are hypocrites, saying sorry for Paris etc. etc. but advertising for only Muslims to read."
An Optus staff member named Dan responded saying: "We believe Australia is a welcoming and inclusive society".
"We welcome all our customers, and where we can, we love to be able to assist our customers in their native language," he wrote.
"The sign is just letting any Arabic speaking customers know that we have a staff member who can help them in their native language."
Another customer then commented below: "I'm contacting everyone I know to let them know [a]bout the Casula advertising and urging as many of them and their friends to leave Optus asap".
Other customers have since hit out at the posters, including one customer who wrote on Optus' Facebook page: "If you want to push your multicultural barrow, why aren't the offending signs also in Vietnamese, Chinese, Indonesian etc? Oh, and English of course. The Optus message regarding consideration for all is inconsistent. This promotes feelings of exclusion. I doubt Optus meant for a large portion of the community to feel excluded and offended. But it seems to be both practical and reasonable for Optus to correct this situation by removing or modifying the signage".
Optus responded: "We do have signs in English at every store in the country, as well as on all of our advertisements. This run of posters also has signs in Chinese and Vietnamese to let speakers of those languages know we can help them in their own language. The sign itself says 'We speak your language, visit us in the branch and have a chat with us in Arabic', a pretty welcoming and inclusive message".
Other customers have responded postively to the signs, with some posting congratulations on the company's Facebook page and encouraging to continue with using the posters.
An Optus spokeswoman told SBS News "in some communities we actively promote the bi-lingual skills of our front-line staff".
"We recognise that sometimes customers find it easier to understand the detail of a phone plan when it’s explained in their first language," she said.
"Optus remains committed to minimising and eliminating discrimination through our corporate culture, marketing activities, employment practices and interactions with the community. However, yesterday following a threat to our store staff, we made the decision to remove some materials that were published in Arabic. The safety and security of our staff is paramount."
The spokeswoman declined to comment on other locations where the Arabic signs remained on display.
The Islamophobia Register posted screenshots of the complaints on their own Facebook page on Monday.
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