The Diplomat
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, yesterday condemned racist insults against Real Madrid player Vinícius Junior and said that what happened shows “the prevalence of racism in sport”.
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Austrian Volker Türk called on the organisers of sporting events to put in place strategies on the ground to prevent and counteract it. He added that in light of these incidents, his office is interested in “providing guidance to sports federations” on how to implement human rights standards, “to fight stigmatisation, racism or discrimination against LGBTI people”.
The High Commissioner said that “much more is needed to eradicate racial discrimination, and it must start with listening to people of African descent, involving them and taking real steps to address their main concerns”. “We need to look at sports and human rights from a wide range of perspectives,” he added.
Türk, who recalled that worrying attitudes were also observed at the last World Cup in Qatar, acknowledged that in the Vinicius case the reaction of the Spanish authorities has been “energetic”, with quick arrests of the alleged perpetrators of the insults.
However, he stressed that societies themselves also have to make efforts to prevent the repetition of such incidents. “Everyone must ask themselves: Am I prejudiced, do I measure my words, how do I react when someone makes a racist comment?
The high commissioner linked the attacks on Vinicius to the murder three years ago of George Floyd in the US, noting that “it is clear that the problem of police brutality against people of African descent will not be solved until we deal with the broader problem of systemic manifestations of racism that permeate every aspect of our lives.”
Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, a hundred people demonstrated in front of the Spanish Consulate in Sao Paulo in support of Vinícius, shouting slogans against racism and calling for “reparations” from La Liga, its sponsors and the Spanish state to compensate all black people.
“If you mess with Vini Junior, you mess with everybody,” shouted the demonstrators, mostly members of social movements defending the rights of people of African descent. One of the activists, identified as Otelo, from the group Pretas e Pretos (Blacks and Blacks), criticised the racism in both Spain and Brazil. “The Spanish government is racist and the Brazilian government is racist because it accepts racism. All governments, left or right, did not do what they should have done, which is to make reparations to my people”, he said.
Yesterday, from Valencia, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who took part in an informative meeting organised by the newspaper “Las Provincias“, once again denied that Spain is a racist country. “Spain – he insisted – is a tolerant country, the vast majority of Spanish society is tolerant and anti-racist”. And he recalled that “for many years it has been a country of emigration and welcomes those who arrive here as a matter of course”.
