India’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj is an active Twitter user. She threatened to revoke visas from online retailer Amazon’s staff after the Canadian company sold doormats printed with the Indian flag.
TORONTO – The online retailer Amazon is facing some heat after India’s external affairs minister demanded on Twitter it remove an item she said insulted the national flag.
The Twitter storm began after a tweet alerting Minister Sushma Swaraj that Amazon.ca was selling doormats which have the Indian flag printed on them.
Sold by a third-party, the product has caused some online controversy and was the subject of a change.org petition demanding its removal.
On Wednesday, she tweeted the product was unacceptable and asked the Indian High Commission in Canada to take it up with Amazon at the highest level.
Then, she demanded an “unconditional apology” from Amazon and a “withdrawal of all products insulting our national flag immediately.”
She issued a threat saying she would not grant an Indian visa to any Amazon official and rescind previously issued visas, if such products weren’t removed.
In a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for Amazon Canada simply said “the item is no longer for sale on the site.”
Swaraj — with almost seven million followers — is an active Twitter user and regularly employs social media to conduct her affairs. In July 2016, she tweeted that laid-off Indian workers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia would be taken care of after thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Amazon has attempted to establish dominance in India’s online market — which some have described as the world’s next big e-commerce opportunity. However, it faces stiff competition from India-based rival Flipkart which was started in 2007 by two former Amazon employees.
