Argentine Professional Football League Urges Clubs to Adopt Definition of Anti-Semitism and Try for the Simon Wiesenthal Award

July 15, 2021

BUENOS AIRES + PARIS − In September 2020, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Anti-Semitism as a way of bearing witness to the commitment against any form of hatred, discrimination or racism.

The Professional Football League (LPF) -  affiliated to the AFA - brings together the clubs of the first division and manages its championships, stated that “among the greatest scourges that threaten social coexistence in the world are racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination and hatred "

Based on this premise, it issued a notice that "the Professional Football League invites its member clubs to individually declare their adoption of the aforementioned definition as a way to educate, raise awareness and promote the values of coexistence in diversity."

The LPF also invites its members to “organize joint activities with the Simon Wiesenthal Center for this purpose. Among them, it is proposed to create the SIMON WIESENTHAL award. This will be presented at the end of each LPF championship to the leadership, team or player that contributed the most to promote the values.described above.

Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center, added that “Argentine soccer has been a pioneer in promoting  coexistence. Working with AFA, we have empowered the referee to suspend a match whenever racist, xenophobic or discriminatory chants are heard.  We then globalized this right through FIFA, as a natural best practice."

“We take pride in working with clubs based on building bridges and not division. At the end of each tournament, we will judge whom to reward for transmitting those values. We applaud the partnership with the Professional Football League as a great honor,” concluded Dr. Ariel Gelblung, Center’s Director for Latin America.

For further information, please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158 or Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).