Russian supermarket in big mess for selling ‘monkey Obama’ chopping board

An upscale Russian store chain
apologised on Thursday for selling
chopping boards with an image of US
President Barack Obama as a monkey,
after the US embassy reacted furiously.
The product features a family of
monkeys, with an image of Obama’s face
superimposed onto that of the smallest
primate.
The store chain on Thursday announced
it had pulled the item from its shelves,
saying it had not been aware of Obama’s
image.
“Sales of the chopping boards have been
stopped,” Valentina Moiseyeva, a
spokeswoman for the Bakhetle
supermarket chain, TASS agency
reported.
“We are sorry that such product was on
our store shelves. For us it is
unacceptable that a store is used as a
place for political provocation,”
Moiseyeva said, adding that the
supermarket had lodged a formal
complaint against the boards’ supplier.
The board is styled as a calendar for
2016, the year of the monkey according
to the Chinese zodiac.
The Bakhetle chain is based in Russia’s
traditionally Muslim region of Tatarstan
but has stores throughout the country.
“Disgusting to see that such blatant
racism has a place on Russian store
shelves,” Will Stevens, the spokesman for
the US Embassy in Moscow, wrote on
Twitter.
Stevens later posted a picture of the
chain’s apologetic comment, adding in a
tweet: “Thank you to colleagues in
Bakhetle for issuing an apology… We
appreciate this.”
The scandal broke out after one customer
purchased the chopping board in a store
in Tatarstan’s main city Kazan and took
pictures that went viral.
Racist outbursts against Obama — who is
often demonised and ridiculed by pro-
Kremlin figures — have grown common
in Russia in recent years, even from
public figures.
In 2013 Irina Rodnina, a former Olympic
gold medallist and now a lawmaker with
majority party United Russia, posted a
collage on Twitter showing Barack and
Michelle Obama looking at a banana.
She deleted the image later and claimed
her account had been hacked.