The government of Brazil announced on Thursday that it will adopt "concrete measures" against racial discrimination in sports and supported the unusual detention of an Argentine soccer player accused for offending a Brazilian player.

The stance of the government was set in an official note on the incident occurred last Wednesday, which took to prison the fullback Leandro Desabato because he insulted the center forward Edinaldo Batista "Grafite" in a soccer game of the America Libertadores Cup.

"The racist attitude of the Argentine player is against all values of equality, respect and union promoted by sports", the Minister of Sports, Agnelo Queiroz, and the special Secretary of Promotion of Racial Equality Policies, Matilde Ribeiro, said in the note.

The Brazilian government advanced in the text that it will act through the "national and international sports administration to adopt concrete measures to definitely suppress the racial discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia from sports".

A number of Brazilian soccer players in Europe, such as Juan and Roque Junior (Bayer Leverkussen of Germany) and the stars Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos (Real Madrid of Spain) have been insulted with gestures and racial exclamations as the word "macaco" which is very used with that end in that region.

The Desabato detention was the first one ever in the city of Sao Paulo after a game in a soccer stadium of Brazil, after being accused by "Grafite" for the charge of "qualified slander" which carries three years of prison although it has the possibility of release on bail.

Source: Xinhua