Now I’m not a legal professional, so I stand to be corrected, but it would seem to me that the FA have not stated either the charge or the verdict very well. The original charge is that: “‘It is alleged that Suárez used abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour towards Manchester United’s Patrice Evra contrary to FA rules. “It is further alleged that this included a reference to the ethnic origin and/or colour and/or race of Patrice Evra.'” Now yesterday’s statement makes clear that the verdict is that “Mr Suárez used insulting words towards Mr Evra”. These insulting words “included a reference to Mr Evra’s colour”. What do we make of this? Note that the reference to “behaviour” is not part of the verdict. The emphasis then is on the words used by Suárez, not his behaviour: on the ‘what’, not the ‘how’ (so the issue of ‘how he said what he said’, as James Lawton puts it the Independent, is irrelevant).
The key question, then, is this: What were the insulting words? Whatever they were, it is stated that they included a reference to colour. The one acknowledged reference to Evra’s colour came in the context of a question that Suárez asked Evra. Just to be clear, according to the FA statement, the reference to colour is not in itself the ‘insult’. It presumably influenced the extent of the punishment, but not necessarily the initial verdict. What this means is that the FA must show evidence of insulting words, apart from the use of a word referring to Evra’s colour, to support their verdict. In other words, the issue, as it has been set by the FA in their statement, is not about whether or not Suárez used the word ‘negro’, or ‘negrito’; nor is it about his demeanour when he used the word. It is rather about whether the reference to Evra’s colour came in the context of verbal abuse. I would expect Liverpool FC should have no difficulty acquiring the services of a team of legal professionals who should be able easily to destroy the FA’s case, and overturn the verdict. The odd thing is, if it is true that Evra did indeed utter the words “Don’t touch me, you South American”, allegedly in Spanish, then the case is far clearer that Evra used insulting words which included a deprecatory reference to Suárez’s background, that could be considered tantamount to racist abuse, i.e., of treating another person less favourably on grounds of ethnic or national origin. Moreover, if Evra did say that in Spanish, then the context is a conversation in Spanish, within which the use of ‘negro’ or ‘negrito’ needs to be properly understood. And that would invalidate the argument that Suárez should have been aware of the potentially offensive connotations of the use of the English word ‘negro’ in the UK or other English-speaking countries.
