News / Human Rights

Almost 90% of UK football fans witness racism at matches: Poll

Monday, 11 February 2019 3:06 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 11 February 2019 6:47 PM ]

File photo shows football fans celebrating AFC Wimbledon’s victory in an English FA Cup match at Kingsmeadow stadium in London on January 26, 2019. (AFP photo)

Almost nine in 10 football fans in the United Kingdom have witnessed racist incident during matches, according to a new poll, amid reports that the UK has regressed on tackling racism.

Results of the poll by the Sky News published on Monday showed that 86 percent, had witnessed incidents of racism in matches at highest levels of the sport in the UK.

The poll said almost all fans from black, Asian or minority ethnic background, some 93 percent, had personally been subject to racist abuses and attacks during football matches.

The findings come days after authorities in the English Premier League (EPL), the most prolific club football league in the world, launched an investigation into a racist incident in the London Stadium where an Egyptian footballer had been abused by supporters of West Ham United.

A video that came online showed that Mohamed Salah, playing for Liverpool FC, suffered some extreme verbal rants.

PressTV-Top Muslim soccer player verbally abused in UK

Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah has been the target of a major Islamophobic attack in an EPL march.

Raheem Sterling, an England national team member playing for Manchester City, was the victim of an alleged racist abuse during his team match against Chelsea at London’s Stamford Bridge in December.

Sterling took to the media after the match claiming that racism was the order of the day in the UK, saying that the media in the country were treating players with different ethnic and religious background completely differently.

The Sky News poll, which covered 1,000 UK adult fans who frequently attend football matches, showed that a third of supporters in the general population had had racist abuse directed at them personally.

Nearly a fifth of supporters from black, Asian or minority ethnic background said they experience such abuses often or every time they attend a match.

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