Football racism fuels far right rhetoric in Romania

This week a Champions League match between Paris St.-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir was suspended because of racist allegations concerning a Romania match officials, writes Cristian Gherasim.

Players from the Turkish team were furious, saying fourth official Sebastian Coltescu of Romania had used a racial term “black” against assistant coach Pierre Webo, who is from Cameroon.

While others saw this as racism, others regarded the scandal as being blown out of proportion.

Opinions in Romania were split, with newly elected far right group –AUR- defending match official Coltescu in a press release.  It is the first time in the history of football when a match has been suspended after a racist remark by a referee.

AUR party surprising everyone during the Romanian general election issued a press release backing Romania match official who made racists remarks in Campions league.

AUR is a far right group that everyone now talks about but no one heard about prior to this Sunday’s election. AUR took 10 % of the vote becoming the country’s 4th largest. The party did not exist before September last year and no one expected it to win any Parliament seats.

Party leader George Simion is an ultras, a football fanatic and an activist for uniting Republic of Moldova with Romania. He became known when he got himself involved in anti Magyar protest in Valea Uzului war cemetery last year. He is of involvement in international incident inciting hatred against Hungarians.

The party has been defined as national party, religious, anti-foreigners, anti-masks, corona skeptic, organizing anti face masks protests in previous weeks.

AUR party was the huge surprise during general election in Romania and the MPs coming from this party are no short of controversies.  One of its MPs is a convicted felon and has been arrested for involvement in bank robberies, for setting up an organized criminal group that broke ATMs.

Another future senator is an anti-mask and social covid measures advocate and against stopping religious mass gatherings. Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă gained notoriety and electoral traction, especially from the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken by the Romanian authorities during this period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjH1i0UjCp0&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=Samuel

Another MP has just been excluded from writers’ union for calling Roma people a social plague and women useless without men.

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