Racism in Serbian football fan culture: the establishment fails to act
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Version 0 of 1. Anyone familiar with the football fan culture of Serbia cannot feign surprise at the latest disturbances that took place at the Under-21 Serbia v England international game in Krusevac, during which Serbian fans allegedly chanted racist abuse at the English team. This was unfortunately not an isolated incident, and is unlikely to have been a spontaneous outburst. Since the 1980s, former Yugoslav (Serbian and Croatian in particular) football fan clubs have been the chief instigators of violence at domestic and international football games. Those fan clubs tend to be closed to outsiders, and are less concerned with football than with orchestrating brawls. Distinct from general football audiences, they have been the main reason for increases in violence. Some Belgrade-based clubs are alleged to have originally been fronts for neo-Nazi groups, and others are said to have supplied paramilitary combatants for the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. The Krusevac incident must be understood within this particular historical context. While most football supporters in Serbia are not organised around these clubs, Serbian fans have nevertheless been embroiled in a long list of recent violent incidents. In 2005, Serbian football fans held up banners referring to the Srebrenica genocide in a World Cup qualifier against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Following a 2011 violent incident in Genoa at the Euro 2012 qualifier, the Serbian football federation was fined €120,000. This was a crisis point, and following suggestions from UEFA chief Michel Platini, Serbia's ministry of interior formed a special unit to tackle football hooliganism and prevent its ban from international competitions. This time, the racist behaviour in Krusevac drew attention to the wider and more systematic failures of the Serbian political leadership. The immediate response of Ivica Dačić, the prime minister, and the Serbian Football Association (FSS) has been to deny the racist nature of the incident. Dačić has since ordered a police investigation into the incident, and the FSS ordered a disciplinary one. Regardless of what emerges from those investigations, the FSS's refusal to engage with the issue of racism does not sit comfortably with the history of violent fan club culture in Serbian football. Although monitoring violent fans falls under the remit of the ministry of internal affairs (which Dačić oversees), the FSS also has a moral obligation to explicitly condemn racism and other unacceptable behaviour. As the professional regulator, the FSS has not really taken a deeper look into this question, nor does it appear to have set up frameworks to deal with intolerance and racism; a serious oversight given that most Serbian football teams now include foreign-born players. The FSS response to Krusevac is a part of that systematic failure, and it sits in sharp contrast to the English attempts to deal with racism within its own football leagues. However, the problem doesn't only lie with the FSS. The incident, and particularly Dačić's denial of its racist nature, raises much larger questions about discrimination and intolerance in Serbia. Whilst the public reaction has been swift in condemning the fans, Dačić has not been as forthcoming. This is not entirely surprising. Since Serbia's democratic revolution on 5 October 2000, all successive governments have had a record of poor engagement with domestic issues related to minorities and rights. The 2012 Gay Pride parade was cancelled on his watch, apparently due to security concerns. In November 2011, when Dačić was the first deputy prime minister, the small town of Banja Koviljaca, which hosts Serbia's only centre for asylum seekers, experienced raised tensions between the residents and a group of Afghan refugees. The Serbian government has not encouraged debate on any of these issues, nor addressed the groups that promote intolerance or do not support minority rights. In that context, Dačić's reaction to the most recent football incident is not surprising. Serbia has now formed a National Council for the Prevention of Violence and Unsuitable Behaviour at Sports Events, which will be chaired by Dačić and the first deputy prime minister. Let's hope this is not just token gesture. It may bring into mainstream discussion some of the serious problems within football fan culture and its connections to extremism. Racism, intolerance and violence in football cannot be dealt with if there is no broader political or societal engagement. |