Nick Hawkins, the lead sports prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said it was unacceptable for the chants brushed aside because stars were paid lots of money to “take it”.
He warned that clubs who fail to act against abuses could be forced to play games behind closed doors or be docked points to make them pay financially, while fans could be banned for life.
His warning comes after a student was jailed for mocking footballer Fabrice Muamba on Twitter after he collapsed during a match, The Daily Star reports.
He stressed that better education is needed to show “what not to do and how easy it is to detect and prosecute these offences”.
Hawkins also urged sports authorities “to do more about inappropriate chanting and to educate that the excuse, ‘it’s football so it’s different’, is just wrong”.
He also called “for the authorities to take action about clubs that fail to do so if these abusive chants become a habit”.
The game is remembered as soccer’s greatest ever stalemate. History’s most magnificent striker (Pele) faced its most artistic central defender (Moore) in a showcase of skill that became a thing of beauty, ending . More beautiful still, the final, shirtless embrace between Pele and Moore; a wordless confirmation of soccer’s capacity to overcome racial divisions.
After all, soccer had once stopped a war. When German and Allied troops decided to hold an unsanctioned cease-fire in Christmas 1914, the most famous symbol of the impromptu camaraderie, that at least held a candle of hope for humanity’s future, was an impromptu game of football held in no man’s land.
The point is, when people have contemplated world peace, they’ve quite often either been kicking a ball around, or watching other people playing.
What goes through the mind of someone who trolls Facebook‘s RIP pages in order to leave messages like “Rot in Piss?”
What sort of person does that? What do they really look like? What do they sound like?
The BBC took it upon itself to try and meet one of these people, just to measure their charm level and the cut of their jib.
In a piece of footage unearthed by The Next Web, a BBC reporter tracked down a troll in Cardiff, Wales, who goes by the handle Nimrod Severen. Astoundingly, his real name is a lot less romantic: Darren Burton.
In a show that aired Monday night, the BBC showed how his postings to various Facebook RIP pages were brutal, bigoted, and sometimes racist.
Burton looks like so many large, smoking men whom you’d see in a British pub. He didn’t deny the reporter’s accusations that he posted vile material.
But what about the unknown (to him) people whose pages he trolls? “Do you think about the effect it has on them?” asked the BBC’s Declan Lawn. Burton’s response: “Yeah.” What does he think about them? “F*** ‘em,” Burton said.
Burton then asked Lawn to consider whether he was, in fact, breaking the law.
Some might imagine racist speech is definitely breaking the law. England’s soccer captain, John Terry, is facing a court case, after he was accused of directing a racial epithet at an opposing player. (Terry was stripped of the captaincy this week.)
Burton believes that Facebook allows him to say whatever he likes. “Facebook is an open forum,” he insisted. He also believes that the courts wouldn’t punish him, in his eyes, severely.
Referring to a previous case, in which time served was very short, he said, contemptuously: “Nine weeks? Nine weeks in jail? What’s that?”
Somehow, people have come to believe that the Web is a place where everything can be said. Some companies appear to foster the notion.
For example, when Facebook was reluctant to take down Holocaust denial pages, thecompany’s reasoning was: “The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed.”
Some might take this to support the expression of ideas (however crude and cruel) that might generally be regarded as repugnant. Others would deem Burton’s expressions as merely hateful and mindless and not ideas at all.
So many enjoy their anonymity on the Web. It can give so much. But, in this case, there is something suitably chilling about putting a face to the words, a face to the nasty, heartless, pointless thoughts that pollute not merely the Web, but humanity itself.
