Successful prosecution in Rugby
A 56-year old defendant from Rugby has been sentenced for racially abusing two people including a police officer.
Read more...England and Chelsea football player Callum Hudson-Odoi has called for an end to the "evil of racism" after he and a number of team-mates were racially abused by Montenegro fans in March 2019.
England won the Euro 2020 qualifier 5-1 in Podgorica in March but the match was overshadowed by racist chanting.
"Just everybody stop the racial abuse," Hudson-Odoi told The Players' Tribune. "I just want to live my life. I just want to play football and make my family proud."
The 18-year-old Chelsea player was making his first senior England start against Montenegro and he says the abuse that he, Danny Rose and Raheem Sterling received was "unacceptable".
It followed a number of high-profile incidents in both domestic and international football matches this season.
Montenegro have been ordered by Uefa to play their next home match behind closed doors as punishment.
Hudson-Odoi said: "To be hearing stuff from the crowd saying, 'You're a monkey' or, 'Ooh-ah-ah'. Stuff like that, for me it's why? Why do that evil? How can you even racially talk about someone else, or discriminate against them because they're a different colour to you?"
More recently, Spanish Football Club Valencia have been condemned after a video shows their fans performing Nazi salutes and acting out monkey gestures aimed at Arsenal supporters in a Europa League game (02/05/19).
Kick it Out, the anti-discrimination body, condemned the gestures as "shocking and inexcusable."
"We utterly condemn such behaviour," an Arsenal spokesman told CNN. "It has no place in society or football. We are working with Valencia on this and continue to encourage fans to report incidents and to provide witness statements so effective action can be taken.
In a statement, Valencia said it "publicly condemns and expresses its utter disgust" for those responsible for the Nazi salutes and monkey gestures.
It also added that it was working with the appropriate authorities to identify those responsible, insisting it would take disciplinary action against supporters.
But Valencia was criticized by Kick it Out after stating that while the actions were "absolutely unjustifiable," they would be assessing whether there was any "possible provocations."
"Racist behavior cannot be justified whatever the provocation." Kick it Out told CNN. "To suggest otherwise casts a doubt on the sincerity of calling such behavior 'absolutely unjustifiable.'"
In April 2019, Chelsea took action against three of its supporters after a video appeared to show them singing a song in which they called Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah a "bomber." Salah also suffered alleged Islamophobic abuse during Liverpool's game at West Ham in February 2019.
There has been a several incidents of racism and hate related crime at football grounds and sports facilities in Warwickshire during the past 12 months. EQuIP have informed Birmingham FA and they are looking at ways they can address the issues surrounding racism and hate crime in a sports context.
EQuIP are organising a community football festival which will involve a football competition for children, adults football match and an educational workshop that will focus some attention on racism and hate crime in football enabling people to go away confident of how to define a hate crime, what to do if an hate crime occurs, how to report and the importance of reporting. The date and time of the event will be confirmed in May 2019, but people from all over Warwickshire will be involved.
EQuIP would like to remind the wider public that hate crime in any setting is not acceptable, but it does appears that racism and hate crime in sport is sometimes seen as normalised and accepted which often puts people off reporting.
EQuIP would like to encourage any person that experiences and/or witnesses a hate crime to come forward and report via one of the reporting mechanisms that are available which include reporting online via the www.reporthatenow.com website, email: advice@equipequality.org.uk or telephone: 01788 863117. In an emergency, always call 999, but you can call 101 in a non-emergency situation.