Source: BBC
Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou has been expelled from her country’s Olympic team over comments she posted on Twitter which were deemed racist.
Papachristou was due to compete in the London 2012 Games, which officially start this Friday.
But the Hellenic Olympic Committee said her posts mocking African immigrants and expressing support for a far-right party went against the Olympic spirit.
Papachristou has apologised for the “unfortunate and tasteless joke”.
As well as the comment on Sunday referring to the West Nile virus and Africans living in Greece, Papachristou had also reposted a tweet by Ilias Kasidiaris, a politician with the far-right Golden Dawn party, criticising Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s stance on immigration.
The mood among Greece’s Olympic team was already delicate: athletes have battled through tough conditions due to the spending cuts and the country is sending its smallest team to these games for the past 20 years. Now Greece has lost one of its medal hopefuls on the eve of the Olympics.
But the Greek Olympic Committee was under pressure to act. Human rights groups have lambasted the government for not doing enough to clamp down on racism: anti-immigrant attacks have increased as Greeks have hit out during the recession and the extreme right – many say neo-Nazi – Golden Dawn party has soared in popularity, entering parliament for the first time in its history.
So calls are growing louder here for Greece to show its other face: open, welcoming and tolerant; a country that rejects racism in any sphere. Voula Papachristou’s expulsion will be seen as an example of that.
She had previously retweeted several links to videos promoting the views of Golden Dawn, which won 7% of the vote in Greece’s recent elections, and had directly communicated online with Mr Kasidiaris.
Mr Kasidiaris gained notoriety for slapping one left-wing woman politician and throwing water over another, during a heated debate on a television show.
Papachristou tweeted him on his name day last week: “Many happy years, be always strong and true!!!” Read further
Editor’s note: Some day Islamophobic tweets will be considered equally abhor-able as racist or anti-Semite tweets. Even today any discrimination and stereotyping based on race, ethnicity or religion is morally and spiritually reprehensible.