By Andrew Warshaw
March 11 – As if Brazil’s World Cup organisers didn’t have enough problems on their plate delivering the infrastructure in time for the June kick-off, the country’s president Dilma Rousseff has now come out and expressed her concern about racism in football after a spate of incidents involving players and officials. In comments posted on Twitter, Rousseff lent her support to former Brazil international midfielder Marcos Arouca da Silva, who was subject to monkey chants while playing for Santos against Mogi Mirim last week.
“It’s unacceptable that Brazil, the country with the largest black population outside of Africa, has racism issues,” Rousseff said.
The player himself did not hear the comments but said in a statement: “It’s lamentable and unacceptable that there is still room for this kind of thing today. I sincerely hope cases like this will be severely punished because until that happens nothing is going to change. Impunity and the connivance of authorities with the people who do this kind of thing are every bit as serious as the acts themselves.”
The incident came a day after racist chants were directed at referee Marcio Chagas da Silva during the Rio de Janeiro state championship match between Esportivo and Veranopolis. Bananas were reportedly also left on top of his car and placed in its exhaust pipe.
Rousseff pledged to make sure a clear anti-racism message becomes a theme of the World Cup. “We are going to take on racism,” she said. “We have agreed with the United Nations and FIFA that this will be a World Cup against racism.”
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