A group of soccer fans in Sudan displayed a huge banner of Adolf Hitler during a match Saturday in the city of Omdurman, and were reportedly not stopped by the local police from doing so. According to Spanish daily Marca, the banner was displayed by soccer “ultras” supporting Sudanese club Al Hilal Omdurman, as reported by national talk radio station in the United Kingdom, Talk Radio.

According to the radio station, the match was a local Sudanese derby played between bitter rivals Al Merreikh Omdurman and Al Hilal Omdurman. The latter clinched the Sudanese Premier League title after winning the match 2-0. A group of fans, who call themselves Ultra Blue Lions, also displayed a banner with the word “holocaust” during the match. Along with the posters, the fans also lit a series of flares.

According to World Israel News, the incident is now being investigated by the Fare Network, an umbrella organization that fights discrimination in soccer with a network spread in over 40 countries.

Fare also called it a "gruesome first for sub-Saharan Africa." The report also said that even though belligerent behavior was expected from the fans, it was still a disappointing and startling thing for any club to do.

This is not the first time that soccer fans used anti-Semitic imagery to mock or insult a rival team.

The most recent incident took place earlier in November when some anti-Semitic stickers depicting Anne Frank, a famous holocaust victim, were displayed at a soccer match in Germany. Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (DPA), a German news agency, had reported at the time that stickers with Frank wearing a Leipzig team jersey were found with an abbreviation “JDN CHM” which is short for “Jews Chemicals."

The image caused a scandal as Frank is a symbol of holocaust victims because of a diary she wrote while she was in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam from 1942-44. Frank and her family were betrayed, caught and deported, which led to her death at the age of 15 in a concentration camp.

A similar incident took place in March when two England supporters received lifetime bans for making Nazi gestures during a match against Germany. Reports from the time said while one fan made a Nazi salute, the other imitated an Adolf Hitler mustache along with making a cut-throat gesture towards German fans. The two football fans reportedly received first lifetime bans ever issued by the Football Association.

Over the years, soccer fans in Europe have taunted rival teams and their supporters with anti-Semitic slurs.

For example, fans of the Dutch team Ajax are often referred to as “the Jews” probably because of the historical presence of Jews in the Dutch capital. There are several other soccer teams known as “Jewish” for similar reasons, including England’s Tottenham Hotspurs, Italy’s Roma and Germany’s Bayern Munich.

A lot of teams have also established groups of “ultra” fans that include violent supporters identifying with neo-Nazism. Even though no obvious connection can be established between European soccer clubs and the Jews, these so called “Jewish” teams and their supporters have become a target for intense anti-Semitic abuse.

RELATED STORIES
Football