“I’ve had to get used to putting on a brave face every time I hear racist jokes, but what happened was different.” In December, the rugby Cherif Traoré –born in Guinea– posted that he had received a rotten banana as a Christmas gift. The person responsible for the gift was the Italian-Argentine Ivan Nemer, with whom he shares a team at the Benetton Treviso club. This Friday, the Italian Rugby Federation (FIR) decided to suspend the player until the end of the season.
The FIR had opened an investigation to determine which member of the Benetto Treviso squad had carried out this racist act in the exchange of gifts between team players for Christmas. Finally, it was determined that Nemer was the one who gave a rotten banana to Traoré, of Guinean origin but nationalized and a member of the Italian team.
A federal court was the one who ordered that Nemer, 24, be suspended until June 30, when the United Rugby Championship season ends, a tournament that brings together teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and South Africa. Nemer gave up resorting to the FIR to appeal this sentence.
The accusation against Neme was opened after Traoré denounced on his Instagram account on December 21 that the day before he had received a rotten banana wrapped in a gift exchange. “Not only is it something shocking, but what hurt me the most was seeing most of my teammates laughing. As if it were normal,” the player denounced then from social networks.
“I’m used to, or rather I’ve had to get used to, putting on a brave face every time I hear racist jokes, but what happened yesterday was different,” lamented the Guinean-born player. Benetton Treviso reiterated at all times its “firm condemnation of all expressions of racism” and maintained that the entire squad and the coaching staff apologized to Traoré.
In its statement this Friday, the FIR specified that to define Nemer’s sanction, it considered “the desire (of the player) to clarify what had happened, the apologies presented to his teammate, the recognition of the damage caused by his behavior to the image of Benetton Rugby, of Italian rugby and of sport in general”.
“Racism never had and will never have any role in my life, just as it shouldn’t have any role in anyone’s life (…) I come from a multicultural country like Argentina, where cultures have intermingled for more than of a century”, argued Nemer, quoted in the same statement, to rehearse his apology.