World Motorsport governing body (FIA) president Mohammed Ben Sulayem strongly condemns online abuse which continues to hit the world of sports. Sulayem made the remarks on Wednesday, December 11, during a ‘United Against Online Abuse’ side event of the FIA General Assembly which is underway in Kigali. He highlighted the hate speech existing in sports, pointing out social media platforms as a common channel of abuse. “Social media is not our social media. Most of them have no one to judge them, no one to tell them you are right or wrong. They are good when it comes to abusing people. They are good when they come to actually breaking people,” he said. The fact that Sulayem was once a subject of online abuse drives him to dedicate his efforts in taking a lead in fighting the vice which persists in the world of sports and motorsports in particular. He said, “It happened to me before, but do I want to talk about it and complain and try? No, we do something about it. And how do we do something about it? Is by tackling it. By tackling it is by understanding it.” “And then, when it came really that I said “enough is enough” is when our officials started being abused. Abuse with their threats on their lives, threats to rape them, kill their families, all of that. “Do we sit and do nothing? No it’s impossible, that's not what we are going to do; and, if we do that, we fail our sport, we fail ourselves, we fail the communities. And more than that, our support will be beyond repair,” he added. Sulayem said that online abuse goes beyond motorsport and the issue has escalated in the sports. “No, it is an issue that is not just to the FIA, but to a guarantee, if not to all the sports in the world. And when I sat down with heads of state, for example, the president of Slovakia, he said, we face it also in our government,” he said. “This is not something for me alone or for. For our federation alone. It is. We have to stay united. And it is a marathon.” Sports journalists targeted by online abuse The 2024 Sports Journalist Barometer Report, published by the United Against Online Abuse Campaign (UAOA), recorded a disturbing rise in both the volume and toxicity of online abuse directed at sports journalists, to the extent that it may impact their ability to report freely. The report’s findings are set to galvanise the growing coalition against online abuse in sport, driving meaningful, decisive, and collective action to safeguard those who bring the stories of sport to life. According to the report, misogyny was identified as the most prevalent form of abuse, followed by sectarianism, racism, and attacks on physical appearance. David Hassan, a professor of Sport Policy and Management at FIA University suggested that there is a need to protect sports journalists from online abuse as well as support legal action against individuals who can be identified as having posted online abuse. “Normally you find that there are such crimes and such hate speeches are spread through social media. The report that we're launching today is a concern amongst journalists,” he said. The entire principle of the online abuse, Hassan said, is that it is a collaboration of sports governing bodies and governments. “It's not the FIA working independently, but rather it's working in collaboration with a range of other governing bodies who are equally concerned with the extent of online abuse against their athletes.”
