The CEO of the Australian sunglass company 'Valley Eyewear', Michael Crawley, apologized in the beginning of this month for using images of various Yugoslav WWII (NOB) monuments in a recent promotional campaign which advertised a new line of sunglasses. The company came under fire in early July 2018 on social media for the use of such monuments in their advertising, but the majority of condemnation was targeted at their use of photographs of the Jasenovac monument in Croatia, a monument which commemorates the site of an Ustaše concentration camp which hosted the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and other anti-Axis dissidents during WWII. In his defense, Crawley alleges, according to the BBC, that, "We didn't know it was a death camp at the time." In addition to the use of images of Jasenovac for advertisement purposes on the Valley Eyewear website, additional text was included on the website which seemed to liken the Jasenovac monument to some nature of space-ship. Since the controversy erupted during the first weeks of July, Valley Eyewear has removed all photographs and marketing which depicted any Yugoslav monuments. For more information, see this BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44696492
Australian eyewear company apologizes for using Jasenovac monument in promotional campaign
Updated: Apr 12, 2020
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