translated from Spanish: The UAR’s verdict on the racist messages of Matera, Petti and Socino

A month after the scandal broke out and controversy over the racist messages that the three players posted on their Twitter account, during 2012 and 2013, the UAR took the forefront of an investigation with athletes in mind and solved a number of measures on this issue. In an official statement, he confirmed that they carried out four months of research to finish “taking measures related to the publication on social networks of different racist, xenophobic and discriminatory expressions of players Pablo Nicolás Matera, Guido Petti Pagadizabal and Santiago Gabriel Socino”. As expressed therein, the Argentine Rugby Union conducted “disciplinary process, arguing that in view of the time elapsed between the date of the facts investigated and the present day, the action is prescribed”, so that the previous sanctions are left to investigation.
In the letter, published on the official website, officials ratified “the categorical condemnation of any racist, xenophobic and discriminatory expression.” “The UAR makes the learnings of organizations with a long history of the battle against hate speech its own,” they emphasized prior to publicating the two measures that Matera, Petti and Socino will have to face.Such players from Los Pumas must “participate in a course with two objectives: 1) become aware of where prejudice arises and the consequences that these have on relations between people and 2) prepare them to participate in the program of “Discriminating stereotypes and prejudices”. In view of this, the Union will “control the effective implementation of these restorative activities, in order to resolve issues of eligibility for future participations in the national representative teams and/or eligibility to occupy the team’s captaincy”, while stressing that its presence in the team is currently “subject to compliance with the measures” and the Board of Directors “withdraws endorsement of Pablo Matera’s captaincy until the restorative measures are successfully completed”.

Original source in Spanish