“The Idrissa Gueye affair” continues to make waves, almost a week after the refusal, out of cultural and religious conviction, of the PSG midfielder to play the match Montpellier – PSG (0-4) placed, like the whole 37th day of Ligue 1, under the sign of the fight against homophobia.
After those, among others, of the President of Senegal, Macky Sall, and the PSG Ultras, the new position on this subject came from the Senegalese Federation, which officially supported its player, and strongly reframed the Federation. France and its National Ethics Council. The latter sent a letter to Idrissa Gueye on Tuesday, asking him to clarify his position.
“It is with great surprise (and great concern about the treatment of certain players mainly of African origin, let us say it clearly) that the Senegalese Football Federation has taken note of the letter of May 17, 2022 bearing the heading of the FFF and supposed to come from its National Council of Ethics, begins the mail. If it is difficult to find the legal, statutory or regulatory bases of such an approach in the texts of football or sport in general, its purpose is on the other hand clear: to force the player to do what his free will does not inclined to do. Are we really in this France that we were told and told about in our schools, the one whose motto is freedom, fraternity and equality for all? »
When ethics is based on hypotheticals and diktat, individual freedom is at risk.— FSF (@Fsfofficielle) May 19, 2022
The FSF believes that Gueye does not have to justify himself, whatever his real position on homophobia: “There is an elementary principle in law which says that no one can be required to provide proof of a negative fact. We must all feel concerned by all forms of discrimination and not only those which affect us personally (…) The turn of the correspondence is all the more worrying with regard to the respect of the elementary rights of the player that we read there this sentence which sounds like a threatening sentence without prior judgment: “by not participating in this operation, you validate the discriminatory behavior, the refusal of the other and not only of the LGBTQI community. »
The CNE of the FFF, by the signature of its president Patrick Anton, is summoned to justify itself: “Has he realized that he is stigmatizing the said player by classifying him immediately and without his opinion? in the category of persons discriminated against? This is how the whole problem of freedoms presents itself today, they are no longer universal: there are those that we promote or even impose, even with forceps if necessary, others for which we turn our heads away and who will never benefit from a dedicated championship day unfortunately (…) One of two things: either these assumptions are unfounded and we invite you without delay to express yourself in order to silence these rumours. Either these rumors are correct. In this case, we ask you to be aware of the scope of your gesture and the very serious error committed. »
Expressing its solidarity with its player, the body finally reserves “the right to seize the competent international bodies in the field of sport, or in matters of human rights so that what looks like institutionalized harassment ceases. »
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