It's all fun and games 'til someone gets racist on Twitter...

[renee shah]

Özil reports Twitter user for racial abuse

PEPE ÍÑIGUEZ. Hamburg 06/19/2012

Real Madrid's German international Mesut Özil has reported the owner of a Twitter account for racial abuse, after the player was accused of not being German, according to the Bild newspaper.

The player's lawyer - Sascha Beumer – decided to take legal action after an unknown Twitter user posted messages using a private account during the Denmark-Germany game, stating that the player was not German and criticising his surname – which is of Muslim descent.

"Özil isn't German! A piece of paper doesn't change your origins", were the unknown user’s words in their first message, then adding that nobody with a non-German name should play in the German team.

Soon after, amid the protests - both online and offline -, Twitter decided to block the user's account from where the racist comments came from.

The Real Madrid player's father and agent - Mustafa Özil – totally agreed with his son's decision to report the incident: "it's important to say that you can't get away with saying things like that. This person has overstepped the mark".

Özil – who has played in all three of Germany's games so far in the 2012 Euros – was born in Gelsenkirchen (West Germany), while his parents come from Turkey. The Real Madrid player has always defended his German status.

Comments

[mesutcanada.livejournal.com]

Racism is all about fear. People are afraid of different cultures and think it will somehow threaten their own culture. If people just took the time to know individuals from other cultures they would see that they are just normal people living their lives and there's nothing to be afraid of.

Although the racism against Ozil infuriates me, the cultural debate about him is actually one of the things I found initially intriguing about him. It's just one of the many things that makes Mesut an interesting, intriguing and complex public personality. Too bad that some people use it against him instead of for him, like I do.

[renee shah (from livejournal.com)]

When I first started following him (his last season at Werder) I was equally intrigued by the Turkish vs. German identity issue, so much so that I'm going to be doing an MA in Berlin in a year's time on the very issue. So thank you Mesut, for my future career! ;)

[icanseenow.livejournal.com]

really? what subject are you studying? HU or FU?

[renee shah (from livejournal.com)]

European Sociology at FU--a lot of the course work revolves around immigration/integration and religious minorities in Europe. I have an LLM and focused on immigration/free movement of persons in the EU and want to continue that, but with more focus on Germany's Turkish population.