2023-11-16 03:52:01
This time the decision is final. At the end of October, the “Rouge Direct” collective announced the suspension of its activities in the face of “massive homophobic cyber harassment and death threats”. This Thursday, November 16, it will go further by putting an end to its existence after seven years of active fight against homophobia in football. His recent calls for help addressed to the government and French football authorities have all gone unanswered. Faced with this “abandonment”, it is “with deep and lasting sadness and anger” that “Rouge Direct” stops, detailing its motivations in the following press release.
“Our activities have been suspended since October 31, 2023, on the advice of our lawyers, after weeks which saw an increase in demonstrations of homophobia in the football stadiums of the French championship, but also violently homophobic insults and threats death against us. The Minister of Sports (Editor’s note: Amélie Oudéa-Castéra) was incapable of publicly and spontaneously expressing a clear and frank message of support for human rights activists drowned under a flood of homophobic insults, threatened with death.
She refused to report (under article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) these serious facts to the Public Prosecutor. What abandonment. The unacceptable gap between his words on “zero tolerance” against homophobia, and his anecdotal actions against this scourge that kills, will have just highlighted the resignation of the State in its obligations to protect the LGBT minority. We will not dwell on the total and culpable inaction of the French Football Federation and the Professional Football League. Their unforgivable responsibility in the trivialization of homophobia in football is now notorious, and we have nothing to do with it. »
“Rouge Direct” was born in 2016, a few months after the cessation of the activities of the activist association “Paris Foot Gay (PFG)”, already resigned by the indifference of the institutions. With this collective, Julien Pontes and Pascal Brethes “warned, denounced and informed” from their social networks or in the media about homophobia in football, while providing support to the victims of this crime. “For the past few weeks, I have been careful when I leave the house. This is not normal,” spokesperson Julien Pontes explained to us at the end of October, who had received death threats from anonymous people.
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