England police have arrested 11 individuals who are reported to have abused players in the England football team after their Euro 2020 championship final loss. England lost on penalties after three black players missed their penalties.
English fans are arguably the most passionate football fans in the world, wasted no time in trolling Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford.
While football fans are entitled to be disappointed and express their views, a number of comments on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter were racist and made threats.
Those comments were condemned by the UK Prime Minister, head coach Gareth Southgate and the Football Association. The UK Football Policing Unit collaborated with top social media platforms to get vital information which showed over 600 posts that were racists and hateful towards English football players.
The UK Football Policing Unit sifted through these posts and found that 207 of these posts had crossed the line and were criminal. After examining these accounts, the authorities found 34 of these accounts were in the UK and the remaining 123 were overseas accounts. The authorities tracked down the UK based accounts and arrested 11 individuals who are reported to have breached section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
Sky Sports News
The penalty for breaching section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 could result in a 6 month jail term while an offense of this section can result in jail time up to 2 years. Out of the 11 people arrested, 3 of them were arrested for stirring up racial hatred which carries a max penalty of 7 years in jail.
The UK has sent a strong message to football fans and all social media users that racist, sexist and hateful speech does have consequences and that the authorities will take action on any such posts going forward.
Sportstars around the world have been very vocal about the amount of social media abuse they get whenever they lose or their team ends up losing. A lot of these sportstars often have to get off social media for some time or block comments on their posts due to the horrific amount of abuse they are subjected to.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have taken flak for not doing more to stop cyber bulling and protect their users from racist and hateful comments.
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