A disturbing video showing a school-aged boy racially abusing staff at a Canberra cafe has gone viral.
Police have been made aware of the incident at the Folks Gallery cafe in Dickson, where staff filmed the abusive patron calling them 'viruses'.
"Look at her big forehead. Look at you. Yeah, get away, you viruses," the boy is heard saying in the footage.
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"Your face looks smooshed in. Stop filming me. What, are you filming the back of my head? You've already got my face."
The boy then spat twice on a table outside the cafe and demanded staff 'clean that up'.
The cafe's owner, Vincent Chen, told The Riot Act the tirade started after he asked a group of teens to stop smoking outside his store. He also told them to leave when they started abusing him.
The group allegedly responded with: "We won't leave, you leave Australia."
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Chen said: "At first I was of course angry, if someone talked to you like that you would be angry. I was shocked."
"I have lived in Australia and Canberra for so many years and I did not expect this to happen because people are really, really nice to me.
"We know we are aliens, we are coming from other countries, people here might think we will rob their jobs, I don't know. We try our best to contribute to society, we have our business here, we choose to live here because we love the country."
However, despite the disgusting behaviour from the teen, Chen said it was 'not his fault' and that he hoped that the video would instead serve as an educational tool.
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He reckons the kid's behaviour is 'what they have been given' and believes if the boy had visited China or had a friend who was Chinese then he might be more considerate.
Chen added that the boy had since privately apologised to him and that's all he wanted out of the situation. He was disappointed to see someone so young burst out with that type of behaviour, but hope a lesson was learned from all this.
The ACT Chinese Australian Association has since spoken out, saying such racial abuse should be publicly shamed.
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"If they think it's OK to behave like this, smoking in a public place, ignoring the signs and being abusive, they should be exposed and account for the consequences," they said.
"Racial abusive behaviours must be stopped.
"We urge the government to work more closely and directly with the communities, listen and support the communities and promote awareness on what behaviours are not acceptable and could be punishable."
Featured Image Credit: TikTokTopics: Australia