German Premier League club Schalke 04 suspended Tuesday night President Clemens Tönnies for three months. A sanction that comes after racist remarks, according to his detractors, against Africans. The Board of Ethics of the Ruhr Club accused him in a statement of having "violated the prohibition of discrimination contained in the statutes of the club". On the other hand, this body dismissed the accusation of racism as "unfounded" and consequently saved him the heavier sanction of final dismissal.
"Like that, Africans would stop making children"
The controversy raged for several days in Germany after remarks Thursday by the chairman of the Supervisory Board Schalke 04 at a conference of professionals in the food sector, in which the businessman has prospered, managing a fortune of 2.2 billion euros according to Forbes magazine. In his speech, Tönnies had opposed the imposition of carbon taxes in Germany to fight against global warming. And he had called, to reduce emissions, to build rather large numbers of power plants in Africa. "That way, Africans would stop cutting down trees and stop, when it gets dark, to have children," he added.
"The more I think about it, the more it becomes unimaginable that a man of his position and his experience speaks of the population of an entire continent so disparaging ...", said Cacau, 38, former glory of the Mannschaft born in Brazil, today at the head of the integration committee of the German Football Federation (DFB). Like Cacau, several personalities have accused Tönnies of racism, including many former players. Former Schalke 04 striker Gerald Asamoah, now 40, said he was "surprised, shocked and hurt" by the statements of his former president. "He has never behaved in a racist way to me," said the former German-born German international about his "close friend", who apologized publicly.
Cascading polemics
"Nowhere else is integration as successful and as fast as in sport, it must not be jeopardized", Christine Lambrecht, the Minister of Justice, who called the DFB handle "the Tönnies case. Several controversies have shaken German football in recent days. Accused of sympathy with the neo-Nazi movement, Daniel Frahn, the captain of Chemnitz (D3), a city where important anti-migrant protests took place last year at the call of the far right, was sacked .
At the end of July, two commentators on Borussia Dortmund's TV channel, including former player Patrick Owomoyela, were punished after verbal slippages in a BVB friendly against Udinese's Serie A club, where Owomoyela notably imitated the voice of Adolf Hitler on the air.